Harry Potter & the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices
by YuliaVolkovaROX
Summary: COMPLETE! Epilogue up! An attack by strange forces in Diagon Alley, a transfer student from Australia, and the howling of wolves approaches...
1. Chapter One

Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices – Chapter One – Diagon Alley Disorder

by Katherine Chan

A/N: Okay, as with all my other stories, I've come up with an idea, but unlike my other stories, where I just start typing and make it up as I go, this time, I will _have a plot that has been created beforehand_. But I have an idea, so **technically** I'm not actually making the story to fit the title, which I've actually come up with _before_ I've written the story. Have you noticed that – barring Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (Sorcerer's) Stone – all the books' titles are 'Harry Potter and the insert word(s) of insert word(s) '?

So yeah, my idea is: A witch transferring from another country, bringing with her all the 'foreign' cultural idiosyncrasies that exist there, etc., etc. Okay, okay, I confess, it's a special release – Fanfiction, that is – in the 'Clone' storyline I have going at , also under this penname. Who's that girl? It's… drumroll **the** Katrina Elena Dolohov! Err… okay, so some of you may have gathered that Jen/Katrina/The Shadow 'died' at the end of _Pain Goes With Death_, but a lot of people – note, all readers that discussed the story with me later – thought she was still alive. I guess the bit where Katrina says '…You'll see when it's time for you to see me…' made readers think that… ach, my original idea had been that Katrina would die, and then Olivia would eventually die of old age and you get my point? No? That's good, because I'm reversing on my decision, and Katrina _is still alive_.

!!PLEASE NOTE!! Harry Potter is the property of Bloomsbury Books, and is written by Joanne Kathleen Rowling. The following story is based on said book, and does not reflect nor affect the aforesaid author's writing.

Anyway, let the story begin!

Harry jerked awake, fingers already scrabbling at his scar that had been paining him for the last few months and even more so when he woke up. It took a few seconds for the surreal and new sensation to sink in, or perhaps the lack of the said searing pain to be more exact. He scrambled up from the bed and staggered in front of the mirror, tilting his head this way and that to see if there was something different, something that would tell him why there was no lancing pain.

What had he done differently? He wracked his memory, going through the monotonous day that he relived every day of the summer holidays. The Dursleys did not speak to him at all, and when he was in the room, they crowded together in the opposite corner, hurriedly whispering to each other and decamping from the room as soon as possible.

With no-one around the house talking to him, he was left with the frequent letters that his friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger sent him, and they would have been a Godsend had they not been filled with repeated nothings, echoing each other. The safety of Owl-Post had dropped dramatically when Voldemort had been resurrected into his mortal body and the Death Eaters back in business, so to speak.

No, nothing had been different. Perhaps Voldemort, with whom Harry's scar was the bridge between the two, had been the one… Yes, that was it. Harry was supposed to be building up his mind's defences, in his extra lessons practicing the art of Occlumency, although he was failing miserably at that. Perhaps Voldemort had managed to find a way to stop the flow of emotions from roaring across the bond and causing Harry to momentarily experience Voldemort's mood, or, even though the idea itself was laughable, Harry had managed to achieve it.

Still worrying over the problem in his head, he dressed quickly, glanced at the calendar hanging on the wall – there were still five and a half more weeks to go until his return to Hogwarts – and slipped down the stairs as silently as possible. There was no telling if Dudley was still asleep, attempting to, and knowing Aunt Petunia's wildly differing attitude to her 'Ickle Diddykins', attaining a few more minutes of sleep, and God forbid if _Harry_ were to disturb him, even if the Dursleys were thoroughly terrified of him.

He gazed at the empty kitchen, three washed sets of cutlery draining on the sideboard and another set on the table. A note stuck to the fridge by a magnet informed him that the two slices of buttered bread and the cup of water was his breakfast, and that they – the Dursleys, of course, never included Harry in their outings – were going out for the day. Harry stared at the words, and an inkling of fear inched itself into his heart.

Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, had placed a protection on him, one that while he was still in the house in which his mother's blood still dwelled – in other words, his late mother's sister Aunt Petunia – and while he still called that place home, no-one could harm him. As he hurriedly wolfed down the piddling breakfast, a shudder went through him as he wondered if the protection still held if she was not physically inside the house, and also if his calling Hogwarts more of a home than Number Four, Privet Drive would affect it.

A creak in the ageing house's foundations made him jump, and when no more suspicious noises issued, he returned to his room, left hand unconsciously rubbing his lower right arm where he had loosely tied his wand to, under the jumper that Mrs Weasley had kitted him for last Christmas. Harry Potter began writing…

Dear Sirius,

It didn't happen-

He stopped writing, and then prodded the parchment with his wand, burning it into cinders. Harry berated himself for thinking that his godfather was still alive, that his godfather would still be there to read about the strange happenings occurring in connexion with his scar. Picking up another piece of paper, he began writing again, blinking back tears.

Professor Dumbledore,

Nothing happened this morning.

Harry paused. Surely the Death Eaters would be attempting to stop any information at all from reaching Dumbledore. He prodded the parchment again, thankful that he was now of age and could perform magic outside of the school campus. Hedwig, his owl, fluttered in the window, along with two other owls. Lightening them of their messages, he pushed his attempts at a letter aside, and opened the three letters.

The first one, from the brown owl, bore the Hogwarts crest. It contained the notice informing him that school would begin on September the 1st (how could he _not _know that?), and also a booklist of books that he needed for his sixth and second-last year at Hogwarts. Putting it aside, he opened the second letter, the one Hedwig had been carrying.

Dear Harry,

You're being picked up as soon as possible, as you need to get to Diagon Alley to buy your new school things, and also so you can go take your Apparation test. Be ready soon.

Mr Weasley

Harry stared at the letter, and then slit open the last letter, bearing the insignia of the Ministry of Magic.

Dear Mr Harry Potter,

With your coming of age, you are required to be trained for and take the Apparation Exams. Training begins on the 20th of July, and the exam is on the 1st of August. Please ensure that you attend the first training session at the Ministry of Magic…

He skimmed over the rest of the letter, and then put it aside to cram everything he needed into his school trunk. Haphazardly throwing in his school uniforms, he was startled out of his focussed packing by another noise, from downstairs. The doorbell!

Clattering down the stairs, he peered through the little lens in the middle of the door. A surge of relief flooded through him, and he opened the door.

"Professor Lupin! Tonks!" He glanced quizzically at the other four that were standing on his doorstep, none of whom he recognized. "Harry! You packed yet? I hope you got Arthur's letter." Harry nodded, and let them in. "Where are we going? The Burrow? Or-" Harry gesticulated wildly, and the others understood him to mean the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, otherwise known as Number 12, Grimmauld Place. Tonks helped him load the trunk into the waiting car, and as Professor Lupin dropped a letter onto the kitchen table, he answered, "Not the Burrow." He said no more, and Harry understood it to mean he was going to the second destination.

Grimmauld Place was Sirius' family's home, and now that he was dead, Lupin, one of Sirius' best friends whilst they were in Hogwarts, and Harry, Sirius' godson, were unofficially the owners of the place. Harry suspected everyone disliked the place as much as he did, doubly so now that Sirius was dead and the whole place reminded them of him. As the car wound its way around London, occasionally going through culs-de-sac and u-turning here and there, taking looping routes and so on, Harry gazed disconsolately at the passing roads, the only silver lining being that he didn't have to beg the Dursleys to take him to London for him to buy his school things, nor did he have to find a way to Kings' Cross for the train to Hogwarts. Harry supposed that Ron and Hermione would also be there, and he brightened up a little.

The entered the house and the first thing Harry noticed was that the curtains shrouding the portrait of Sirius' mother were gone, as was the portrait. "You finally managed to get rid of it?" He gestured at the empty wall. Lupin nodded. "Yeah, we found a way to get around the Permanent Sticking Charm, and we've taken down the tapestry in the drawing room, as well as a few other things." The place had definitely improved since he'd last been there, and he was glad that it was significantly changed that the house didn't breathe 'Sirius' everywhere he went. Immediately, he was flooded with guilt, rebuking himself for not wanting to remember his own godfather.

"Harry!" Hermione hurried into the vestibule, closely followed by Ron. "You're here!" She hugged him, and Harry noticed that he was now significantly taller than her, though he was nothing on Ron, who was as tall and gangly as ever. "You have no idea how boring it's been without you." He complained to Harry, though he continued to grin. Hermione huffed at the hidden and quite possibly accidental jab, but left it at that.

"Do you have to go to Apparation training as well, Harry? I'm looking forward to it ever so much, apparently it's so-"

"Give it a rest, Hermione. I don't think Harry wants to hear about Holiday School the moment he walks in here. Hey, did you hear? The Chudley Cannons have started winning the Lea-"

"It is **_not_** 'Holiday School'!"

The pair continued to bicker, as if trying too hard to 'act normal', and Harry tuned out and followed behind Ron and Hermione, who were carrying his trunk up the stairs. He was woken out of his melancholy reverie when he realised that they had stopped arguing – playfully – and were looking at him worriedly.

"Harry? Are you… okay?" Hermione's query came out timid, shaky and unsure.

Harry shook his head in a diagonal motion and sighed. "I… I don't know. I just _miss_ _him_ so much…" They exchanged glances over the trunk, and then dropped the trunk down in the room he had shared last summer with Ron. On Ron's side, there was already complete and utter chaos, something Hermione and Mrs Weasley clucked disapprovingly over quite frequently.

"We… we miss him too, Harry." Harry laughed a little, mirthlessly.

"You don't have to be so… so **_submissive_** talking to me, you know. I'm not going to jump down your throats like… like last time. Come on, let's talk about something else." He cast around for another topic. "Say, what have you guys been doing while you've been here? Cleaning?"

Hermione laughed a little, sounding slightly strained. "No, no! They finished while we were still at… They finished before we came here."

"If they made us clean one more cupboard…" Ron made a throttling motion in the air. "No, we've just been doing _homework_ and being bored. We can't even play Quidditch. Say, how many OWLS did you get? I got a few E's, one O – that was in Defence Against the Dark Arts, mind you – but mostly A's…"

Harry cracked a smile. "I bet you got all E's, hey Hermione?" She blushed, and Ron burst out in laughter. "Yep, that's the Hermione we know and love! So yeah, how many did you get?"

"I got an O in Defence Against the Dark Arts too, and also in Transfiguration, Care of Magical Creatures and Charms. Potions… I got an E for that, and for Astronomy – I'm amazed about that one, considering what happened while we were doing the test – and an A for Divination." They continued to chatter about school, trying ever so hard to avoid the issue of Voldemort, his Death Eaters, Sirius or what the Ministry of Magic were doing.

A few weeks passed, their Apparation training came, and with some difficulty, they managed to pass their tests. Harry was personally thankful that he hadn't splinched himself, the result of which he would _really_ be split on where to go.

They decided to conduct their Diagon Alley shopping trip in the last week of holidays. After they had replenished their funds at Gringotts Bank, Mrs Weasley collected all of their book lists and rather unwillingly accepted Harry's and Hermione's money to pay for their things.

"Let's go to Florean Fortescue's place and get some sundaes! You know we haven't really celebrated passing our Apparation tests, not without a Firewhisky Fantas-"

Hermione butted in. "Ron! NO. ALCOHOL!! You, are, a, _prefect_. We may be of age, but _no alcohol_, okay?!"

"Okay, okay! But we're still getting sundaes! Right?" He added.

They settled down outside of the parlour, savouring their triple chocolate ice-cream with peanut butter and melted caramel. Halfway through their sundaes, the peaceful air was rent by several screaming witches and yelling wizards, all of whom were running away from something. Something that seemed to be destroying its surroundings.

"What's happening?! Is it Vol- Is it You-Know-Who?" They leapt up from their chairs, and then they realised that no-one was trying to do magic on whatever was going on…

"I don't know… I don't _think_ so-" Hermione was cut off by another voice, colder, harder, a male's voice.

"I've given too much to follow you here, brat! You, are, not, going, to, beat, ME!" Each of his words seemed to be punctuated by a rather metallic noise, rather like metal hitting the cobblestones of the street. As the crowds of shoppers fled, with Harry, Hermione and Ron peering around the umbrella that had been knocked over, they saw a youth who was masked, darting around the street dodging glinting metal things that sunk into the stone behind the youth, thrown by the man flipping from building to building. The youth had short spiked black hair, and they assumed it was a 'he'.

"Oh my… Why isn't anyone trying to stop them?! Someone could get killed-" Hermione stopped and gaped as the youth executed a flip from the wall behind him, snagged one of the projectiles from the air and threw it at the man. It sunk straight into his chest, but it did not seem to faze him, something which truly scared Harry. Only witches and wizards could enter Diagon Alley, and this man wasn't Voldemort – who knew how much stronger than this man Voldemort was?

"Holy… What's he doing?!" The boy had – seemingly – Apparated right behind the man, and was pummelling him with his bare hands and exhibiting exceptional gymnastic ability as he spun and dealt him a few rather forceful kicks, something that became apparent when the man dodged one and the wall behind him expelled a large amount of pulverized stone.

The pair landed on the ground, surrounded by the fallen knives and also by the dust created from the damage dealt to the surroundings. "We have to help him!" Ron pulled out his wand, only to be stopped by Hermione. "We don't know why they're fighting! For all we know, he could be working for Voldemort, and the other man could be… Oh… Maybe not." She drew out her own wand, and Harry did so too. The man had somehow sent glowing attacks from his hand shooting at the youth, and those of which the boy had not been hit with hit the surrounding buildings and cobbled streets, and as the dust cleared, they saw it had created several gaping pits, a few dead bodies and parts of them flung hear and there, belonging to those witches and wizards that had escaped into the now destroyed buildings.

The boy, however, was still in one piece, and though there were several cuts from shrapnel, it seemed the blasts had not done much damage to him. "You killed these… these innocents!" He spat at the man, and he drew out his wand. "You and I know there's only one spell that'll do anything against you." As he opened his mouth to utter the spell, the man burst out into raucous laughter. "And you think _you_ could do it? You think you'll be able to summon a _Patronus_? You, who has never had a single happy moment in your-"

"_Expecto Patronum_!" The man had seemed slightly frightened at first, but when he saw the silver haze that came shooting out of the youth's wand, he burst out once more in laughter. "Not good enough, I think. Why don't you try again?" His manner horrified Harry; how could he laugh and _play_ with this boy when he'd just killed, what, twelve people? Then what they were talking about sank in.

"He needs a Patronus!"

"Harry, come back here! You'll get yourself killed!" Hermione hissed as he pounded across the streets, coughing as his lungs tried to expel the dust particles entering his respiratory system. "Ex… Expecto… _Expecto Patronum_!" Harry summoned the memory of Gryffindor winning the Quidditch Cup last year, complete with Ron riding astride the shoulders of the ecstatic Gryffindor supporters. The glowing stag appeared, cantering straight at the man who had whirled around, eyes wide in horror. "What?! Who are you?" Before Harry could answer, his Patronus had speared the man on its antlers, and the masked boy had whispered, "Harry Potter. He's Harry Potter."

Harry watched, horrified, as the man faded away into nothing. The boy slumped to her hands and knees, slipping up his mask slightly as he violently vomited on the ground. Hermione hurried to the boy, as witches and wizards began appearing, gasping at all the damage. "Are… are you okay?" The boy spat out the last of the acidic bile, rinsed her mouth with a glass of water she had conjured, and answered "Yeah… I'll… I'll be fine." They realised from her voice that it was actually a she, something that seemed to have been hidden under the heavy trench-coat she was wearing. She looked up at Harry, as he stared back at her, horrified, terrified that he had just killed someone…

"You didn't kill him. He wasn't really… unh!…" The girl got back up, and they gasped as they watched her wounds on her visible right hand and around her neck heal themselves at a rate faster than anything they had ever seen. "He wasn't really human in a rather abstract sort of thing… you wouldn't understand, but he's just been sent back to 'whence he came from', you know, that sort of fairy-tale kind of thing. Thanks, though. I've never been able to… you know, create a Patronus."

They looked at each other. The man had mentioned something, something which Harry really couldn't understand. _He'd_ had a hard enough life, so how bad could hers have been for her to not be able to come up with a happy enough memory or thought to create the Patronus? And her accent was peculiar to say the least. It was most definitely _not_ British, nor did it have the strange lilt common to European countries – like pronouncing 'cabbage' as '_cebbedge'_ – and it was vaguely American.

"He said… he said he'd followed you… But you don't sound like you're from Britain. What country did you come here from?" asked Hermione. The girl laughed. "Am I that obvious? Ah, I'm from Australia. Pretty warm compared to here, even though it's winter there right now and summer here." She looked around at the damage done. "Erm… hang on a moment." She waved her hands around a bit, and they gaped as the dust began swirling around, filling in the gaps, returning the area to the state it had been before the fight. "Well… _that's_ fixed. Dunno about those people though… I'm not sure if they fix themselves if there's just parts-" They all stared as the body parts began wriggling back together, the squelching noises becoming too much, all four of them sticking their fingers in their ears and shutting their eyes.

When they dared open their eyes again, Harry was exceptionally shocked to see some of them getting up, totally healed and definitely alive. "What just happened? Why are they alive? Did you do something...?" He wondered if she could bring anyone back, if she could bring back Sirius, if she could bring back his parents… She shook her head, and Harry's face closed down, all traces of hope once again extinguished. "I can't… It's got to do with him being sent back… It's a bit like whatever damage he does gets fixed. Some of the damage to the buildings here was my fault, so I had to help it along a little. Ah well, better be going. I have some shopping to do-"

"What are you talking about?! You just fought with someone who just killed twelve people and all you can talk about is _shopping_?!" Harry was furious.

"Err… it's all back to normal… it as good as never happened. All you have that can tell you it happened are your memories, and perhaps the memory your wand kindly keeps of all the spells you've ever done." The girl walked off, then stopped again and turned around to face Harry. "And… thanks again, for the Patronus." She did a weird thing with her hands, and everyone gasped as she disappeared in a swirl of shadows. It was almost like Apparating, except that _that_ creates a **loud** 'crack' sound, while whatever had just happened had been totally silent.

"What the hell is going on? She's a witch, who can use magic just like us, you know, with wands and stuff, but… she can do something _else_, like… like…" Ron struggled to find the right words, but Hermione beat him to it. "Like a different kind of magic? Yeah, I haven't read anything about anything like that…"

"Ron! Harry! Hermione! Are you alright?" Mrs Weasley came thundering down the path, Ginny in tow, the latter weighed down with several bags of shopping. As Mrs Weasley checked them all twice over for any signs of injury, the trio informed them about what had happened, and they realised that several reporters had snuck up behind them, taking down every word they said, and taking photographs of them. "Err… what are you doing?" Harry asked one of them, who seemed positively mortified and insulted at the question. "This is an exceptional story! This girl just brought back no less than _twelve _people from the dead, _and_ she repaired the street without a wand, and you, **you**! You sent that man running! Do you have any comments?" As they clustered around them, constantly asking questions, Ron nudged Harry, pointing at someone standing at the end of the street, watching them.

All Harry could see was long, white blonde hair, which was enough to tell him the man's identity: it was Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father and Death Eater to Voldemort. He supposed that Lucius would inform Voldemort about the incident, and the latter would probably try and find the man and perhaps the girl as well, to try and recruit them to his cause. The five fought their way out of the pressing throng of reporters and curious bystanders, and managed to make it back to the Order of the Phoenix HQ.

"That was _awful_, how that dreadful man could just laugh at the girl! Do you remember what he said to her when she tried to summon a Patronus?" Hermione asked, horror evident in her voice. "You mean how she's never had a 'single happy moment'?" Harry asked heavily. "I mean, how is that possible? Surely she's had at least _one_ happy moment in her life!"

They debated the topic that night, with all the members of the Order of the Phoenix that were present having heard about the incident mere hours after it had happened. Dinner was a rather unenjoyable affair, especially for Harry, Hermione and Ron, as their minds didn't seem to want to stop replaying the horrible squelching noises the bodies had made. Harry shuddered.

"Are you okay Harry, dear? All three of you look a bit pale… Perhaps you would like to go up to bed?" They took the chance to escape readily, hurrying up the stairs to their bedrooms. Harry lay down on his bed, his mind replaying the events over and over again, how he still thought the girl had been so… so _callous_, although not as bad as the man had been. She _had_ been as horrified as Harry had been when she realised that the man had killed people…

He drifted off into a shallow dream-filled sleep, dreams of bodies and wriggling snakes and the mask the girl had been wearing telling him that it didn't believe in anything, that it was a nihilist. The girl also appeared in his dreams, unmasked though her face was in shadow. She spoke to him, but his ears couldn't seem to hear what she was saying, and as he fought to move nearer to her, the better to hear her, he felt something pulling him up into the sky above…

"Wake u-u-u-up, Harry and Ron! It's a beautiful day, the birds are singing and there isn't a cloud in sight!" Lupin called through the door. "Molly's making breakfast, and she wants you to know that if you don't hurry, you'll be late for the train!" As Harry stretched, he glanced at the calendar hanging across from him, that he brought with him eight weeks ago. "We're going back… We're going back!" Harry whooped, and dressed quickly, tearing down the calendar and crossing out the last day.

As he thundered down the stairs, he realised that he was feeling more carefree than he had been in two years, what with everything that had happened last year. He finally noticed that the house elf heads on the banister had been removed, and he also realised that no-one had mentioned Kreacher's name, nor had he seen him.

"Hey, I just realised. What happened to Kreacher?" He asked Ron. The latter reddened and looked down at his feet under the table, and a feeling of uneasiness settled onto Harry's shoulders, wiping away all vestiges of joy that had existed. "Umm… he's dead. I don't know how he died, but well… yeah…" Ron forestalled any more questions by delving into his breakfast, and hurried away as quickly as he could when he finished. Harry, who had not been intending to ask any more questions about Kreacher, was slightly puzzled as to Ron's behaviour, but while on the car trip to Kings' Cross, he realised why Ron had been acting so strangely. As they boarded the train, with Ron and Hermione heading to the Prefects' cabin to be assigned their duties and Harry, Ginny, Neville and Luna once again residing in the last compartment.

"How was your summer, Neville?" As they chatted, the conversation led once again to the fiasco that had occurred in Diagon Alley. "What happened? The newspapers said that you were there, and you helped the girl fight the man off!" Harry sighed, and wondered if there would ever be a day where people would ask him all these questions, always about this foe and that foe and _how did he do it?_


	2. Chapter Two

Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices – Chapter Two – Sorting Hat Unsure

by Katherine Chan

A/N: So… how did you like the previous chapter? I won't stop writing until I reach like, the third chapter, because I've already got the story all planned until about then, but after that… I'll be looking at the reviews I _may_ get, and see if this is worth continuing. Anyway, I'll just let you read the following warning…

!!PLEASE NOTE!! Harry Potter is the property of Bloomsbury Books, and is written by Joanne Kathleen Rowling. The following story is based on said book, and does not reflect nor affect the aforesaid author's writing.

!!WARNING!! This chapter contains hints of sexuality, namely the questioning of a certain character's personal choices. Please note that future chapters will contain more 'adult themes', including homosexuality, so if that doesn't float your boat, then please leave right now. I will not be publishing a 'clean' version of this, because this _is_ clean. There will be no explicit scenes, as this is _not_ an 'erotic fanfiction', nor is it a mainly romance story. So for all you _doujinshi_ and/or _hentai_ fans out there, I apologise, although the latter should try writing their own, then they'll see how hard it is.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, prepare for the release of the second chapter of 'Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices"!

The door of their compartment slid open, revealing Draco Malfoy and his 'cronies', Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. "Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in." Draco sneered. Crookshanks, Hermione's pet cat which Harry had been left in the care of, hissed at Draco, hair on end. Luna looked up, her eyes taking in Draco's white blonde hair and recalling the masked Death Eater they had encountered in the Department of Mysteries last year, who had the same but longer hair. "Are you talking to yourself?" She asked, the remark so cutting that Harry had to look twice to make sure it was really the dreamy Luna that he knew.

Malfoy's face was touched by a slight pink tinge, while Crabbe and Goyle growled menacingly, though they were loath to attack Harry, seeing as the last time they had attempted to, they had been left looking like giant oozing slugs stuffed into the Hogwarts school uniform. Retreating from the compartment, they slammed the door, which was immediately re-opened by Ron and Hermione. "He do anything?" Harry shook his head.

"I'm starving!"

"Me too… wonder when we get there?"

"It's been about three hours or so… Almost there, I think."

"Well, I'm still starving."

"Shut up, Ron."

Silence for a few minutes, then…

"I'm hungry."

"Shut. UP!" five voices yelled in unison.

Harry peered out the window into the steadily darkening sky. The forest on either side obstructed most of his view, and he sat back down on the cushioned seats of the Hogwarts Express. Luna was once again reading a copy of the Quibbler, the magazine of which her father was the editor of; Neville was harping over how his _Mimbulus mimbletonia_, a magical plant which he had managed to breed quite successfully; Hermione was reading Harry's set of _Practical Defensive Magic and its Use Against the Dark Arts_, which he had received from Sirius and Lupin the previous year for Christmas; and Ginny and Ron were chattering about this new broomstick they had seen in Quality Quidditch Supplies in Diagon Alley.

"It's called the Lightning Strike Mk. 1, and people say that when you're riding it, it almost feels like you _are_ going at light speed! I mean, it's got a max speed of-"

"… 500 miles per hour! And it accelerates from 0 to 100 in _five_ seconds! **_Five_** seconds! And they say that every single broom is made by one person, and there's only a limited few in Britain, and they're _so_ expensive. Who was it? Katrina somebody…"

"Katrina E. Dolohov! Not related to that complete ass that's a Death Eater, but Dolohov's a common Russian name-"

"… not that she's from Russia. Didn't the sign say she lives in Australia?"

"Yeah, but it said something about her coming to Britain for awhile, to talk to people about it. Wasn't she coming into Quality Quidditch Supplies the day we were there?"

"Yeah, but we had to leave before we saw her… What a pity…"

"Ooh, look! We're there!"

They scrambled off the train, and hurried to the Thestral-drawn carriages, the spectral horse-like animals reflecting the little light from filtering down from the lamps hanging from above. A tall girl about Harry's age wandered over to where Hagrid was calling out 'Firs'-years over 'ere… firs'-years…"

"Hey! You! We're supposed to go on the carriages if you're not in first year!" Bellowed Seamus, something which made Hermione and Ginny giggle. The girl _was_ quite pretty, although her strange yet familiar hair-style seemed a little severe. The girl laughed, a tinkling kind of sound, but shook her head and continued to head over to Hagrid. "I'm new! And the letter says I have to take the boats with the first years!" Harry frowned, the voice sounding rather familiar, but he was soon shunted off to the carriages.

"New, hey? Wonder where she's from…" Ron asked aloud, his eyes glazing over as he dreamed about asking the girl out.

"Snap out of it, Ron! You don't even know her name!" They all laughed uproariously, and the ride to Hogwarts was short, although the constant rumbling of Ron's stomach seemed to make it seem longer.

Seating themselves immediately, they chatted with Near-Headless Nick, a ghost whose decapitation had been quite botched, and attempted to find out subtly if he knew anything about a new girl transferring here, but he only winked and smiled. Hagrid strode in, and Professor McGonagall swept in with the Sorting Hat and scroll of names in hand.

The first years filed in, with the new girl at least two feet taller than most of them. Whispers broke out in the Hall as all the students gossiped about the girl. Professor McGonagall directed a stern glance at them all, and as everyone fell silent, the Hat twitched, and then opened it's 'mouth'.

_Welcome all, new and old,_

_To Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!_

_Assembled here are those that are bold,_

_Those that are crafty and those that can see_

_All that is there, and those that try even if it's tough,_

_To achieve the best, all are sorted into_

_Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff! _

The Sorting Hat continued in this vein, and finally, after Ron's stomach had growled 23 times, Professor McGonagall began reading out the names.

"Arkens, Hilary!"

"Hufflepuff!"

"Bailings, Peter!"

"Ravenclaw!"

Professor McGonagall reached the end of the scroll, until there was only the tall girl left. "Today, we have the honour of introducing Katrina Dolohov, who has transferred here from Australia, and will be entering the sixth year!" Ron gasped.

"_The_ Katrina Dolohov? You mean the one who made the Lightning Strike? I didn't know she was our age-"

Katrina sat down on the stool, the Sorting Hat large enough to slip down to half cover her eyes. She sat there for ten seconds, twenty, half a minute, forty seconds, a minute, one and a half… Then, the hat opened it's mouth, but it did not say anything for a moment, and from the silent opening and closing it seemed it was trying to reach for the most appropriate words.

"The… Champion has arrived." Professor McGonagall whirled around to gape at the Hat, while Professor Dumbledore blinked, smiled, and steepled his hands. "I… cannot decide." Whispered conversations broke out, as everyone tried to work out just what exactly the Hat was talking about. Champion? And why was Professor McGonagall reacting like that?

"But as the Sorting Hat, you must Sort every student that enters this school."

The Sorting Hat seemed to pause at Dumbledore's words. "But it is hard… she is intelligent, exceptionally so. She is so hardworking that she may put many of the Hufflepuffs to shame, and she is brave as well, brave and cunning… She has all the qualities that each founder valued in their students and all in equal amounts." The Hat mumbled.

"And you must Sort her."

"Then… let it be…" Harry held his breath, as did most of the male students in the Hall, as well as a few of the female ones. "SLYTHERIN!" Ron groaned, while Slytherin cheered and stamped their feet, as if they knew what a Champion was and that they held an advantage over the other Houses. "But… if she's a 'Champion'… why Slytherin? Isn't that like, the worst house to put her in?" Harry asked.

He watched Katrina as she strode over to the Slytherin table, and he allowed himself a little smile as she batted away all the questing hands, and sat down with a slightly disgusted expression on her face. Harry turned back to Dumbledore, who was standing, ready to deliver his speech.

He held up three fingers. "Three words: Dinner. Is. Ready." The food appeared on the golden plates, pumpkin juice filled their goblets, and all the students, as they did every year, loaded their plates and commenced eating, some pretty much putting aside the laws of etiquette, but Harry noticed that those sitting near Katrina were on their best behaviour, trying to engage her in conversation.

Shaking his head, he turned his full attention to his dinner, with the chatter surrounding him creating a peaceful ambience he had not experienced for a long time. Glancing up at the staff table, he realised that there would be a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Looking from face to face, finally settling on the only unfamiliar face. An auburn haired witch, her slightly hooked nose, high cheekbones and defined chin gave her a sort of hawkish look, similar to that of Professor McGonagall's, though softened by youth. She was probably little older than thirty years of age.

Mains over, deserts come and gone, and Dumbledore was once again standing. "Welcome back to Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! There are a few notices that I wish to make. One, our caretaker would wish to remind everyone that the list of contraband items is posted on the boards outside his office, and he also wishes to remind you all that no magic is to be performed in the hallways. Two, the Forbidden Forest is, as the name suggests, forbidden to be entered. Three, we are delighted to welcome Professor Freya Nørskï, who will be taking up the post of teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts!"

Harry wandered up the stairwells and through secret passageways, arriving in front of the portrait of the Fat Lady which was the entrance to the Gryffindor tower, and realised, like last year, the year before, and the year before that, he did not know the password and nor was there anyone around to tell him what it was. He supposed that the others would be arriving soon, and he wasn't disappointed when the prefects arrived with the first years in tow.

"The password's _Lapis Lazuli_, okay?" The Fat Lady swung forward, revealing the stone archway into the common room. Harry stumbled up the stairs, to the door which was labelled "Sixth Year" and collapsed on the bed next to where the house elves had left his trunk. When he finally summoned up the strength to change into his pyjamas, the others had already arrived, and were _still_ talking about Katrina and the Lightning Strike.

Clearing his mind as he had been taught in his long ago Occlumency lessons, he found that sleep came easily, this time, for the first time and months, entirely dreamless. Harry woke up, his scar entirely painless, and thought, I could actually get used to this! Changing into his school robes, he wandered down to the Great Hall, followed closely by Seamus Dinnigan, Dean Thomas, Ron and Neville Longbottom, all of whom were **_still_**chattering about Katrina and whether they'd be able to strike up a conversation with her. "Can't you guys give it a rest?!" he asked, smiling slightly as they glared at him in mock horror.

A small bevy of boys hurried out. "She's already been," they hissed, and Harry burst out laughing as his friends groaned. "Come on, it's not that bad. She's in Slytherin and she's in our grade, so we'll have Potions and Care of Magical Creatures with her at least."

Breakfast was over quickly, as the boys gulped down some toast and then hurried back out again, Ron dragging Harry with him. "Where is she?" "Library!"

"Ahem… Harry? Do you have a moment?" Harry whirled around from where he had been positioned by Ron, the 'better to make her notice you', and blushed as when he saw Cho. "Err… Ron dragged me here. I really wanted to finish breakfast, but…" He indicated the small pile of toast he held in his hand. "Did you… err… want to talk?" Cho shot a jealous look over where Katrina was sitting, where she was already surrounded by Slytherins.

They strolled out of the library, the steady influx of boys flowing into the library caused many of the female students to glare angrily at the library, and to smile in congratulations at Cho and Harry. "Erm… you had breakfast yet?" Harry asked nervously. Cho nodded, then stopped when they reached the lake.

"I just want you to know that Marietta still has to walk around with a balaclava and it's all that _Hermione Granger's fault_." Harry splutter, but Cho overrode him. "I don't care what you think, but I just wish you would talk to her and find the counter jinx. It's not like it matters anymore, what with that foul Umbridge gone and all, and I'm sure Marietta doesn't want to quit the DA anymore and well…" She trailed away as Harry continued to stare stonily back at her. "You think the rest of the DA will accept her back in, when she sold us all off?" When Cho's eyes darkened, Harry hurriedly added, "I mean, yeah, I'll ask Hermione for the counter-jinx, and you're right, it doesn't matter anymore, but if she wants to rejoin the DA, you'll have to ask them the next time we have a meeting." With that, and unable to continue to stare back at in the uncomfortable silence, he strode off, back to the castle to retrieve his books.

Hermione sidled up to him when he entered the Entrance Hall, and he realised that she had seen him talking to Cho. "… and she wants you to give her the counter-jinx for her friend, Marietta." He finished telling her what they had been talking about, and they headed for the dungeons for Potions as the first bell rang. Ron joined them a few minutes later, the large group of boys trailing behind Katrina as she sauntered down.

"Ah… Is this tenth year Slytherin and Gryffindor Potions?" Harry and Hermione nodded. "Yeah, it is." They sank into a slightly embarrassing silence, and Harry wondered why she hadn't reacted or done anything dramatic about his scar, which everyone else seemed to do when they first met him. Perhaps she had noticed the scar, realised who he was, and didn't need to ask the inane question "Are you Harry Potter?"

The door slammed, and Professor Snape swept in, his shoulder length black greasy hair swirling around his sallow hook-nosed face, and a surge of hatred rushed through Harry, and he knew that it was a mutual dislike. Snape marked the roll, pausing at Harry's name to make a snide comment about him, and strangely, also at Katrina's name, but when he said it, with a slight roll as if caressing her name, they all wrinkled their noses in disgust.

"You have all been accepted into NEWT Potions, all of you having achieved at least an 'A', and although I was rather… loath to take on those who did not manage and 'Outstanding' in your OWLs, it was the Headmaster's wish that Potions was open to all who wished to take it, although I am rather… surprised to find some of you deciding to take this subject." At that, he glanced at Harry, and the Slytherins laughed, all of them except Katrina, who had quirked an eyebrow and was looking at Snape as if she thought he were insane.

Sobering quickly, perhaps trying to impress her, he quickly reverted to know-all-about-this-subject teacher mode, and proceeded to set the task. He strode over immediately to Katrina's cauldron – it wasn't a pewter one, and no-one knew what exactly it was made of – and under the pretence of checking if her potion-making skills were up to standard, he spent the entire lesson at her bench.

Apparently, in Australia, they took the APHIDs, or the All Possible Higher Independent Degrees, which were of a standard, apparently, between OWLs and NEWTs. However, from how quickly and surely she concocted her Bravery Brew and the absolutely perfect amber hue of it indicated that perhaps her standard was at least NEWT level, if not higher.

Harry, for one, was glad that Snape's mind was elsewhere other than on him, because it seemed that Snape delighted in picking on each and every flaw in Harry's life, even outside of Potion making. Hermione, however, was muttering about paedophilia, but even though she wasn't thinking entirely about the potion she was making, she still managed to create a perfect Bravery Brew, which was more than could be said about Harry's which was more orange than amber, and he had been reading and re-reading each and every line of instructions on the board.

Potions over, they filed out of the dungeons with all the boys immediately rushing over to Katrina to congratulate her on her exceptional potion. Harry and Hermione managed to prevent Ron from joining the throng of desperate and hormone overloaded boys, and they sidled away for their next classes, with Harry off to Astronomy, Hermione off to Arithmancy and Ron off to Care of Magical Creatures. Their timetables had been given a good mixing, and the only subjects they were definite of having with all of the other students in their grade and house were Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration and Charms.

Astronomy during the day was spent calculating where the stars would be when during their second class the same night. Katrina fell into step with Harry as he walked to Astronomy, and he could almost hear Malfoy making some snide comment out of the definite and possibly unintentional insult she had just dealt to him. "I heard you talking to your friends that you had Astronomy. Where exactly is the Astronomy Tower?" As he told her, he realised she wasn't really listening to him; her eyes were looking out of the windows that they passed, and also carefully watching all the stairs and hallways they passed and travelled through.

"Didn't any of the other Slytherins do Astronomy?" Harry asked, curious as to why she would ask him, a total stranger. She laughed, the same tinkling sound. "No, it's just that…" She twisted her head around to check that there were none nearby. "It's just that they're so annoying! I have to constantly tell them to keep their distance, and do they listen?" Another laugh, and she shook her head. "I didn't introduce myself, did I? I'm Katrina Dolohov, and you are?" Harry gaped at the girl. She didn't know who he was? What did they teach people in Australia?

"I'm Harry Potter." She only nodded, and didn't say anything else. "Are you the Katrina Dolohov that makes the Lightning Strike racing broomsticks?" She grinned, showing almost blindingly white teeth. "Yeah, I am. I've had hundreds of people ask me that and trying to get me to sell them one."

They entered the Astronomy Tower, with Harry in shock that the girl did not even know his name or what his scar meant. Settling in at their desks, they took out their charts and watched as Professor Sinistra began writing the class's work on the board. When she had finished and everyone was working away, she, like Professor Snape, made a bee-line for Katrina, except _this_ time, it seemed she was experiencing some difficulties.

Her sense of direction in the skies was wildly different, something resulting from Australia being in the Southern Hemisphere and Britain in the Northern Hemisphere. After a while, Professor Sinistra judged Katrina to have gotten her bearings, and strolled around the classroom, helping the other students.

The lesson ended, and Harry was immediately mobbed by his fellow classmates, all asking about Katrina. When he had finally sent them all on their way to have their lunch, he told Hermione and Ron about how the girl had not known who he was.

"Was your hair covering the scar?" Asked Ron, not really believing what he was saying to have even the smallest chance at being possible.

"No, I don't think it was. I thought it was strange how at Potions, you know, she didn't react at all about my scar, and she did see it… She really doesn't know who I am!"

"How could that be? I mean, you're like, the biggest hero of the century!" burst out Ron.

Hermione tilted her head thoughtfully, tapping her nose. "I think that maybe, in Australia, that V- Voldemort wasn't much of a crisis, nor were his Death Eaters. Maybe that's why she doesn't recognize what your scar means."

Harry sighed, and realised that despite all the times he had moaned to his friends about people always making a big fuss about his scar, he actually thought it was worse without. Tucking into his shepherd's pie, a strange feeling settled onto him, as if someone was watching him closely. Shivering slightly, he looked up and noticed that everyone was also looking slightly nervous.

Everyone, except for one person, who was daintily polishing off her pie. Katrina finished her lunch and looked up and Harry gasped. Her eyes! They were silv- No, that must have been the light, Harry thought, as she stood up from her seat, her eyes very much the bright blue they had always been. Looking back at his lunch, he didn't realise that the feeling of being watched had dissipated.

"Hey, do you think we should invite her to the DA?" Ron asked, straight out of the blue. The male members sitting around nodded their heads vigorously, agreeing immediately. "Yeah, we should!" "I bet she's as good at Defence Against the Dark Arts as she is at Potions!" "We don't want to look as if we're discriminating against Slytherins, do we?" Harry and Hermione exchanged amused glances, and shrugging, agreed. The boys dropped their lunches immediately and high-tailed it for the doors which Katrina had just exited through. A few minutes later, they returned. "She said she'd think about it… I gave her the coin though, and explained to her what it meant."

Hermione sighed, and Harry burst out laughing. He stopped immediately when he saw Cho get up and glare at him, Marietta following close behind. Or at least he _thought_ it was Marietta, the balaclava covering her entire face. "Hey, Hermione. When are you going to give the counter-jinx to Marietta?" He asked casually. She looked up, and then ripped open her book-bag and pulled out a piece of paper. "If she crosses out her signature and signs it again at the bottom, everything will be back to normal." Harry quirked an eyebrow. "Isn't there another way? I mean, I don't know if she'll want to… oh I don't know! It just seems a little… oh, forget it… I'll tell her." Harry shot up from his seat and quickly strode towards Cho and Marietta. "Come to the next DA meeting, and cross out your signature and sign again at the bottom. That should- That'll make the spots go away." He tried to inject some certainty into his words, but it seemed that he had failed rather miserably. "Oh, really? I suppose this is what dear _Hermione_ tells you, isn't it?" Cho flounced off, and Marietta glared at Harry and followed her, leaving him standing in the middle of the Great Hall.

Laughing, Ron clapped him on the back and the pair were joined by Hermione as they walked up the Main Stairs, heading to the Gryffindor tower to retrieve their next class' books. They encountered Katrina along the way, who seemed to have been waiting for them.

"Err… Dean Thomas told me that you were the leader of the DA, and uh… I was wondering if you had a spare coin… so that we both have one… Uh… that's if you want me to join. And I would much rather prefer to have a new coin and to return this one to Mr Thomas, if that would be possible." She shifted uneasily, and then brightened when Hermione pulled one out of her pocket. "Here you are… I was amazed they didn't ask for you to join at breakfast. Here, I'll take that. We'll return this to him." As they walked off, Harry looked at Hermione quizzically.

"Wasn't that your coin?" Hermione blushed and nodded. She pushed the fake Galleon into Harry's hand. "Here, give that Dean. I'm sure he doesn't want to miss finding out when the next meeting is." Hurrying off, Harry and Ron looked at each other.

"You don't think…" Ron whispered, eyes wide open.

"How should I know? I mean, she likes Krum, doesn't she? And it's really none of our business if she is, nor is it anything really bad- Err… Ron? You okay? Why are you looking at me like that?" Harry paused. "Oh! I see, ickle Ronniekins fancies Hermione!" Laughing as Ron chased him and tried to bop him on the head, their merriment was interrupted by Malfoy. "Is that Mudblood _gay_? Ooh, watch out Pansy, she might want to jump you!" As Pansy giggled hysterically, Ron and Harry stalked off, leaving Malfoy looking quite foolish.

"We so have to beat his ass at the next Quidditch game… Hey, did you get your Firebolt back, Harry?" Ron asked. Harry nodded. "Yeah, they sent it to me during the summer holidays. The Dursleys went off when they saw the huge package. Thought it was a bomb, I think." They entered the common room, Ron chuckling at the antics of Harry's only living relations, but Harry nudged Ron in the ribs, pointing at the huge sign newly posted on the noticeboard.

"What? I _know_ the first game's us against Slyther- Oh, you mean _that_ sign."

_BY ORDER OF THE HIGH INQUISITOR OF HOGWARTS_

_All Educational Decrees from Number Twenty-Four to Number Twenty-Eight have been repealed. All decrees from and including Number Twenty-Three are still extant._

_The above is in accordance with Educational Decree Number Twenty-nine._

_Signed: Cornelius Oswald Fudge, Minister for Magic_

And then, below it, another, much smaller sign.

_Please note that the current High Inquisitor is Professor Freya Nørskï._

"Huh? We still have a teacher who's reporting to Fudge? Doesn't he believe Dumbledore?! What in the name of Merlin is he thinking?" Ron raged. "Dunno… Maybe they'd just like to keep an eye on the students here, you know, like Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle. And who knows, we might actually be taught something this year." Ron continued to mutter under his breath. "Well, even if she doesn't teach us anything, we've still got the DA."


	3. Chapter Three

Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices – Chapter Three –Lightning Never Strikes Twice In the Same Place

by Katherine Chan

A/N: I think in the second chapter, I actually tried to make some – corny – jokes. But then I kind of did a huge no-no by making everyone think that there was a possibility that Hermione Granger was gay. Now, why is that a no-no? Because… Homosexuality is still something that most people do not approve of, and some – note: most of them – do not accept it at all and go out of their own way to make life as awful as can be for the 'local homosexual'. Homosexuals are still a marginalised group, but let me tell you this: Do you think they actually chose to become part of a group that is generally insulted, reviled and discriminated against?

!!PLEASE NOTE!! Harry Potter is the property of Bloomsbury Books, and is written by Joanne Kathleen Rowling. The following story is based on said book, and does not reflect nor affect the aforesaid author's writing.

!!WARNING!! This chapter contains low level homosexual references. If you dislike such thing, well, I really wonder why you didn't leave last chapter.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, prepare for the release of the third chapter of 'Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices"!

The bell rang, and all of the tenth year Gryffindors sidled into Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, with Professor Nørskï already sitting behind the teacher's desk. She smiled at the students as they came in, although it seemed slightly rigid and cold and did not reach her eyes. Harry stared at roof-to-floor mirrors that had been fitted into the room, covering every inch of wall possible. He wondered if the new teacher was excessively vain of her looks or if there was a specific reason.

"Welcome to Defence Against the Dark Arts. My name is Professor Freya Nørskï, and for this term, we will be duelling." Behind her, on the blackboard, a piece of chalk wrote out everything she was saying. Harry looked at Ron, triumphant. "See? She _is_ going to teach us something!"

"Move to this side of the room for a moment please. I have no wish to brain you with your neighbour's stool." They hurried towards the front of the classroom, and the stools and desks flew back to arrange themselves neatly at the back of the room. "Leave you bags here, you'll only need your wands. Arrange yourselves into groups of four, please." Professor Nørskï paced towards the stacked up furniture with Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Neville grouped together. "Today, you will be duelling within a restricted space. Any reversible jinx or curse may be used, with the exception of any illegal spells. You may hit anyone on the other team, and the winner is the team that scores the most successful hits against the other team at the end of the round. Points will be awarded for ingenuity. You four, here." She gestured to Harry's group, and they sidled up to the back of the classroom. Professor Nørskï moved to the wall, and drew a glowing line in the middle of the class, separating Harry's group and the other group. "You may not step over the line. Start!"

Harry flung out his wand arm. "_Stupefy_!" he yelled, knocking out Parvati. "_Impedimenta_!" bellowed Ron, and Seamus froze. "_Isikilia!_" screamed Hermione, and hundreds of glittering beetles of ice flew out, attacking both Dean and Lavender. Lavender staggered backwards, and screamed "_Rictusempra!_", and Hermione fell to her knees, gasping for air. Neville raised his wand. "_Stupefy!_" he cried, and Lavender was knocked out, just as Harry uttered "_Genjutsa!_" Dean screamed in horror as he began hallucinating, just as Professor Nørskï called out "_Finite Incantatem!_" Hermione stopped wheezing and Dean stopped 'seeing things', but the ice beetles continued to bombard Dean and Lavender. Professor Nørskï waved her wand around a bit and they too disappeared, then she roused Parvati and Lavender. "First round goes to Granger, Longbottom, Potter and Weasley. Excellent Ice Beetles, Granger, and a very good Illusion, Potter, though I was surprised you used the Japanese variety, _genjutsu_. Good inhibition tactics, Brown, but you three could have done a little better, and that includes getting faster."

She stepped back. "Ready for the next round?"

"That was _cool_! Hey, Harry, I dare you to hit Malfoy with one of those Illusions!"

"Ron! You _know_ that if Harry does that then Malfoy will know who did it when it's lifted! Didn't you listen to what Professor Nørskï said?"

"That's a pity… I wish the spell wouldn't do that, otherwise I'd make Malfoy think the Aurors were coming after him and his parents…"

Harry bid Ron and Hermione goodbye then exited the castle and headed towards Hagrid's hut, where his Care of Magical Creatures lesson was. Hagrid was standing next to several wooden crates, the contents of which were making strange _bangs_ and rattling noises. He stopped. "Ooooh, **no**. It's not Blast-Ended Skrewts again, is it?" He asked nervously. Hagrid grinned widely. "Dumbledore's asked fer 'em ter be on the syllabus." Harry groaned.

"And they _still_ don't do anything, do they?" Malfoy's scathing voice held a tremor of fear, causing Harry to smirk a little. The ferret-face acted like he was a big man and all, but when it came to the creatures that Hagrid favoured and the darkness of the Forbidden Forest, his macho bravado disappeared faster than the Golden Snitch. "Actually, they're great fer fightin' an' tha' kind a' thing. You know, like instead a' dog baitin', you can have Skrewt baitin'. An' if you train 'em good, they make great guardians an' the like." Malfoy scowled. "That great oaf must be joking. He expects us to train these things?"

Harry edged towards the crates and stared at the Blast-Ended Skrewts. Last time's had all been dark-coloured ones, but it seemed that Hagrid had been able to breed vibrantly coloured ones, something which seemed to redeem themselves slightly in many of the girls' eyes. He slipped on his dragon hide gloves and gingerly picked up a mainly indigo Skrewt, and was surprised to see that it was actually quite placid. "Did you already train them or something?" He asked. Hagrid nodded. "Yeah, I thought they needed a li'l bit a' trainin', jus' ter make 'em easier fer you guys ter handle an' all."

Following his lead, the Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students reached for a Skrewt, their hands protected by their dragon-hide gloves. The Slytherin students however, were loath to do so, but finally picked up one each when it became apparent that no-one would be stung, bitten or burned. "Fer this term, you'll have ter look after that Skrewt an' make sure it doesn' die or anythin'. Mebbe you'll be allowed ter keep 'em afterwards, but I'm not exactly sure…"

The double lesson was spent riffling through the notes they had taken about the Blast-Ended Skrewts two years ago, and adding to and or editing them from the information they garnered from feeding them. Harry thought it was an exceptional lesson, one in which the 'dangerous' creature wasn't actually trying to attack them while they attempted to study them. The lesson ended with Hagrid supplying all of them with a separate labelled box to put their Skrewt in.

Harry trudged back up to the castle, when a tawny owl landed on his shoulder. Relieving the owl of its note, he stared at the message Professor McGonagall had sent him.

"Mr Harry Potter,

The position of Gryffindor Quidditch Captain has been left vacant with the graduation of last year's seventh years, and it has been judged that you are an appropriate choice for this station. A reply as soon as possible would be appreciated, as your first game is next month, against Slytherin, since Gryffindor was last year's winners and Slytherin the runner-ups.

Professor Minerva McGonagall"

Harry whooped, then scrambled to tell Ron, the team's Keeper, and the beaters Andrew Kirke and Jack Sloper. Then he realised that he would have to hold trials for all of the Chasers, the previous three having graduated.

"… so yeah, the trials are on this Friday, I need you guys to all be there. We have to see how good they are at dodging Bludgers and stuff like that." Kirke and Sloper strolled off, discussing which one of their friends they thought would be good for the position. Harry consulted the note, and sighed as he looked at the Slytherin line-up.

Montague, a Chaser, was the Captain, and it seemed that his choices leaned to larger and bulkier team members, with Crabbe, Goyle, Warrington, Pucey and Bletchley all 'substantially built'. Malfoy, the Seeker, was the slightest member of the team, and his only reason for being on the team was the 'generous' donation of seven Nimbus 2001's, all of which were nothing on Harry's Firebolt, although it gave them a distinct advantage over the rest of the players.

Ron had a new Cleansweep, and Kirke and Sloper owned Comets that weren't too old. Harry wondered if Katrina would be making a donation of her own to the team, and hoped that she wouldn't. He noted that the Slytherin's Chaser Pucey had graduated and that the trial for the position had been yesterday afternoon, although the successful player had not been posted.

Malfoy strolled up next to him, and under the pretence of looking at the Quidditch notices, he hissed, "You're going down, Potter. Our new Chaser's Katrina, and you know what that means." Harry snorted. "That all of you are just going to sit there and get her to do all the work?" He sauntered off, inwardly quivering with apprehension. If she was as good at Quidditch as she was at everything else, then they _really_ had a reason to get worried.

The week passed by, and Harry was amazed at the turnout at the Chaser trials, with Ginny Weasley, Parvati Patil and Colin Creevey showing much greater skill than most of the other contenders for the three open positions. Training sessions went exceptionally well, and the possibility that they could actually win against the Slytherin team grew stronger.

The Defence Association, or better known as Dumbledore's Army or DA for short, was also going very well, with most of the members being able to summon Patronus', although no-one had tried it against an actual Dementor. With regards to schoolwork, Harry and Ron personally felt it was actually easier than in fifth, when they had been preparing for their OWLs, whilst now they were residing in the lull before the storm that was the NEWTs.

"And it's Weasley, Weasley, Patil, Creevey, Kirke, Sloper and POTTER!" Lee Jordan yelled into the megaphone, the Gryffindor supporters screaming in the stands, all of whom took up three-quarters of the stands, since Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff always supported the team going against Slytherin.

"Potter, Montague, shake hands." said Madam Hooch, the referee. Montague attempted to crush his fingers, but Harry managed to save his hand from painful oblivion.

"Mount your brooms." Madam Hooch brought the whistle to her lips, then blew hard, and the fourteen players shot up into the air, the Quaffle quickly grabbed by Ginny and the two Bludgers were smashed at the Slytherin team by Kirke and Sloper, both of which had improved greatly since the last game they had played. Harry soared over the game, searching for a glint of gold, for the flutter of wings, and he knew that Malfoy was also doing the same, searching for the Golden Snitch. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Katrina zooming across the field, straight at Colin who had possession of the Quaffle.

"And Dolohov intercepts the Quaffle! Look at her go, that Lightning Strike sure is the broom of the century! And no wonder she can fly so well, she bloody well made the broomstick herself!"

"Jordan! Get back to the game!"

"Okay, okay, Professor. Dolohov, Warrington, what the hell does he think he's doing?! Dolohov again, Montague, what?! What is with those two Chasers? They're just passing it straight back to Dolohov-"

"JORDAN!"

"Sorry, Professor. Anyway, Dolohov's in the goal area, she shoots, come on Ron! YES! He saves! Passes it to Weasley, Pat- intercepted yet again by Dolohov, passes to Warrington, OUCH! Nice shot by Kirke, Creevey with the Quaffle, roaring down the pitch, oh wow! Dolohov intercepts, passes to Montague, back to Dolohov, shoots, come on Ron, sa-! Well, it's 70-nil for Slytherin…"

Harry frowned. Katrina was making things exceptionally hard for the Chasers, evident from how she had just appeared straight in front of Colin and snatched the Quaffle out of his hands without making any contact at all. The Gryffindor supporters were screaming below, urging the players on, and then…

There! Harry dived, he was only forty feet, thirty fee- Katrina appeared right in front of him, blocking him! Harry swerved, and mentally cursed. The Snitch had disappeared yet again, and Malfoy had the most annoying smirk on his face. Kirke and Sloper hit the Bludgers hard at Katrina, but she expertly dodged both of them, and at the same time snagged the Quaffle out of the air.

Damn it, I have to make sure she's occupied before I can go for the Snitch, but what if Malfoy's going for it too? Harry thought, entirely frustrated. Circling over the pitch, he stared as Katrina leaped off of her broom, swung from Montague's broom then flipped up into the air and grabbed the Quaffle yet again, then landed on Goyle's broomstick, who flew her back to her broom. She definitely had excellent athletic ability, so fast and so sure!

She was zooming straight for the goals, and Ron was looking exceptionally nervous, and…

Malfoy was speeding towards something, something that was circling the Slytherin left goal-post, something tiny, something golden…

"Come on!" Harry urged his broomstick, quickly accelerating, gaining on Malfoy… Level with Malfoy, Harry stretched out his hand, and then, with the memory of Katrina's aerial acrobatics in his head, pulled himself forward and off of his broomstick, hands flailing and…

Harry pulled himself into a ball, then hit and rolled along the pitch. "GOT IT!" He raised his hand, Golden Snitch struggling against his fingers. The Gryffindor supporters exploded onto the pitch, with the Slytherin team landing dejectedly. Harry could see Katrina saying something to the other players and stalking off; he supposed it had something to do with them making her do all the work. The game had ended at 150 to 130, Gryffindor not having scored a single goal at all, and all of Slytherin's 13 goals had been made by Katrina.

"Did you see how fast she was going? I mean, she was almost able to stop you from getting the Snitch but you did it!" Harry gaped. "You mean… she was _that _fast? How could she have managed to get from one side of the pitch to the other _that_ quickly?!" Ron nodded. "Yeah, she was behind you, and she almost jumped like you did. She's a monster! In a good way, I mean, but she should be on the national team!"

Harry nodded absently, and replayed how she had flipped from Montague's broomstick. How could someone move faster through the air sans broomstick than with one? She had been moving so fast that she was almost blurred, and from up in the air, it looked like she had flown through the air. Shaking his head and reminding himself that he didn't have to play against Slytherin until next year, Harry changed back into his school robes.

Colin's little brother, Dennis, hurried into the changing room, camera in hand. "Can I get a group photo?" A few seconds later and a lot of purple smoke emitted, and Harry, Ron and Ginny emerged, coughing. The crowds were still celebrating, with the Slytherins hurrying towards the castle, all of them except for one…

"Congratulations on a great game, Harry." Katrina shook hands with him, and with the rest of the Gryffindor team as they emerged. "Yeah, you too. How'd you get so good?! And do you do gymnastics?" She laughed. "You must have lived in the Muggle world before, to know what that is. No, I never did gymnastics, but with Quidditch… Australia's a sporting nation, and the competition is exceptional there. If you're not good at Quidditch or any of the major sports, you're practically a nothing. Well, yeah, I have to go. See you later!"

She waved goodbye, and fought her way back through the masses of admiring students. Ron made a slight choking noise, and when Harry turned to look at him, he realised that Ron had been trying to say something to Katrina, but even now couldn't find the words. "Snap out of it!" Chuckling, Harry whacked Ron hard on the back.

They hurried towards the castle, when suddenly, the sky darkened. Something obscured the sun's light, and when the girls had stopped screaming and everyone had lit up their wands, the surrounding darkness seemed to smother the light.

"Everybody, back inside the castle!" Professor McGonagall called. Then a light appeared, high in the sky, and it grew larger and larger- no, it was getting closer! Harry yelled, it looked like the blasts the man had thrown in Diagon Alley!

A figure appeared, silhouetted against the brightness that was the ball of power. It braced itself against the blast, but was steadily forced downwards, downwards…

Harry thought the world had been torn apart, dirt and grass flying and the sky was entirely dark in places and blindingly bright in others and people were screaming… Blood was trickling down from his head, and he staggered upright and surveyed the landscape. He and everyone else had been flung backwards, closer to the castle but not hard enough to hit the stone foundations. There, where they had all been, a crater in the dirt, and a familiar figure floating down from the patch-work sky. Harry crawled forward, and saw the masked girl lying face down in the dirt in the middle of the crater.

There was blood smattered on her black clothes, and Harry wondered if she was dead… No, she was getting up, though rather shakily. He looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun. It wasn't the man from Diagon Alley; but it was someone similar, wearing the same style of clothing…

"Potter! Get back into the castle! Let us handle this!" Professor McGonagall hissed, as she and the rest of the teachers strode forwards, towards the crater. Madam Pomfrey hurried down to the girl, but she refused to go to the Hospital Wing, waving aside the Nurse's attempts to help her up. The girl staggered to her feet, but then slumped back down to her knees.

"Who are you and why are you here?" Dumbledore asked the man, who was still floating in mid-air. The man cackled. "My name is of no consequence, old man. Your magic cannot affect me, unlike what happened to the last one you wizards and witches encountered." At that, the man began throwing more blasts at the girl who was fighting to get back to her feet.

"_Protiga_" cried Dumbledore, creating a bubble of protection around the masked girl. Harry watched as the blasts of energy neared the girl, hit the bubble and…

Passed right through it! The teachers gasped, and the girl screamed as the blasts hammered into her, flinging her out of the bubble and hard against the dirt and clay. "I told you, _Dumbledore_, your magic cannot affect me! You cannot help her!" The man yelled out some kind of battle cry, and flew down, fist pulled back to strike the girl, who was…

Not lying in the crater anymore. The man hit the wall of the crater in another explosion of dirt and clay, and everyone gaped as they realized the girl was standing at the edge of the crater, wounds healing quickly. Some of her clothing had been ripped off, including part of her mask. Harry thought her face – or at least what he could see of it – looked familiar, but before he could pursue that thought any further, the man had extracted himself from the earth and was attacking the girl anew.

The pair fought, fists and feet whirling, landing blows on each other, knocking each other back and leaping forward again… They whirled apart, breathing heavily, bleeding from several wounds they had inflicted on each other with the daggers they were also wielding. The girl blurred, then flew backwards.

Everyone stared as the man's left arm fell, spouting blood, the severed limb flopping down onto the ground. Harry heard a sound behind him, and he noticed the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws had retreated within the castle, whilst the Gryffindors and Slytherins were watching near the entrance. The Slytherins were watching the girl with their eyes narrowed, calculating, and Harry realized that all of them had parents that were Death Eaters, and were probably filing away all they knew of the girl, to inform their parents and in turn, Voldemort.

The man roared, and summoned up another energy blast and the girl did as well. The pair shot forward at each other, attacks colliding, a giant flash of light…!

Harry yelled as he felt himself being flung backwards yet again, holding on desperately to his Firebolt and landed heavily on his back. The smoke haze gradually filtered away, and he could see a figure floating in mid-air, but Harry couldn't make out if it was the girl or the man. He saw the professors staggering to their feet a few feet in front of him, and finally, he could see that it was the girl that had emerged victorious, the body of the man flung violently onto the lip of the crater.

The masked girl flew downwards, and almost had her two feet on the ground when she blinked slowly and fainted. Madam Pomfrey hurried forward, Levitated the girl and took her to the hospital wing. The professors surveyed the damage, and stared when the body of the man vaporised, and the earth began to whirl, grass and dirt all returning to their places…

"Just like in Diagon Alley…" whispered Harry. Feeling something trickling down the side of his head and matting down his hair, he raised a hand and it came away covered in some dark, glistening, sticky substance… Harry fainted, the image of his own blood covering his hands imprinted into his mind.

"… He'll be awake very soon, Albus, I'm sure. He did lose a lot of blood, but the girl, she lost a substantial amount more. It's amazing how she was able to fight like this! And what kind of magic was that?"

"I've never seen or heard about anything like it either, Poppy. We can only hope that she'll wake up and tell us. If Voldemort were to ally with people like that man, we can only imagine what he could do…"

"But Albus, magic couldn't affect that man! In terms of the capability to do damage, that man was more powerful than He-Who-Must-Be-Named!"

"Too true, Minerva. It seems we are caught between two foes, one that we know and one that we cannot."

Harry blinked his eyes slowly, his vision rather blurry as someone had removed his glasses. Turning his head slightly, he spotted his glasses sitting on the side table and reached for them. Sliding them back on, he pushed himself up slightly, to lean against the pillows. Someone – most like Madam Pomfrey – had erected the privacy curtains, and the whispering was going on outside. Sliding out of the bed, Harry padded to the split in the curtains and poked his head out. He spotted Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey standing at the split of another set of curtains that hid another patient away.

"Professor?"

"You shouldn't be out of bed, Harry. You've lost a lot of blood!" chided Madam Pomfrey, and she moved to chivvy him back into bed, holding a bottle of Blood Replenishing Potion.

"Who is she?" Harry asked. Dumbledore and McGonagall moved inside of the curtains surrounding his bed. "I doubt she would want people to know who she is… seeing as she was wearing a mask on this occasion and also on the last occasion she appeared, in Diagon Alley. She has not awoken yet." Dumbledore answered Harry's unasked question.

"Are there going to be anymore like him?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "We don't know. None of my instruments can tell me anything about these strange men, or of the magic that they and the girl wield."

Harry leaned back against the pillows, and accepted the Blood Replenishing Potion Madam Pomfrey was handing him. He spluttered as it burned down his throat and through his innards, the sensation causing him to curl up into a foetal position. Several minutes later, when the unpleasant feeling ended and he looked back up, Professor Dumbledore and McGonagall had already left to stand next to the girl. Madam Pomfrey checked that he was okay, and then went off to tend to the still unconscious youth.

Hermione and Ron visited during lunch, and informed Harry that he had been out for two days. "Here's your Potions homework, your Charms, your Transfiguration…" Hermione lifted several pieces of parchment from her book bag, and placed them onto Harry's bedside table. Harry groaned. "Great… now I have to catch up on a load of homework!"

Madam Pomfrey insisted that he stay in for one more night, and for the rest of the day, Harry tried to work on his homework but found he couldn't concentrate. He attempted to sleep, and finally managed to slip into a deep slumber a few hours after dinner.

He awoke with a start, and the little amount of light that shone against the walls of the curtains surrounding his bed told Harry that it was still night, or perhaps early morning. Lying there in bed, he found he couldn't sleep at all. Harry edged out of the curtains, intent on looking out the window onto the grounds, but then spotted the other set of curtains, the girl most likely slumbering within.

Padding across the hospital wing, he twitched back the curtains, and stared in shock at the profile that presented itself to him. _Her_! Harry stared at Katrina's face, and wondered why he hadn't recognized her voice, her hair. And the girl had _told_ him in Diagon Alley that she was from Australia! Except… except that the girl had known he was Harry Potter, but Katrina… hadn't. What was going on?

She mumbled in her sleep, and rolled over onto her side, Harry jumping in heightened fear. Breathing slowly, he slipped back to his bed. How could it be? Unless the girl in Diagon Alley wasn't the same one… But Dumbledore said that it was the same person! And why was Katrina being attacked? Harry shuddered as another thought occurred. Katrina was in Slytherin, the only house that had ever turned out a Dark wizard or Witch. What if she became like Voldemort?

"… I don't get it either, Harry!" said Hermione. "I don't know how she could know you were Harry Potter in Diagon Alley but not know anything about you at all here… Unless she's got amnesia or something…" Ron was still in a state of shock; perhaps his preference of pretty girls that needed protecting had something to do with it.

The rest of the school was buzzing about the identity of the girl could be. Some speculated that it could be Katrina, but when Professor Dumbledore informed them that Katrina was recovering from injuries suffered by being 'too close', like Harry, they thought the Headmaster meant that Katrina had just been hit by the collateral damage of the attacks. Harry glanced at Hermione, who was looking quizzically at Katrina, a thoughtful look on her face. Opening his mouth, he turned to Ron, but closed his mouth again when he realised that Ron was looking at Hermione pretty much the same way Hermione was watching Katrina.

Looking at the both of them, Harry realised the full meaning of 'love chain encircle', noticing how one of the third years was looking and talking about the 'incredibly hunky red-head guy'. The change that Quidditch had brought about on Ron had led to his very own fangirl group, and although Harry didn't realise it, he had his own, much larger fan group.

He heard the volume of chatter rising behind him, and as Harry turned, he realised that Katrina's fanboy group was nearing the Gryffindor table as their idol neared Harry and his friends. Hermione blinked up at Katrina, mouth slightly open as the latter looked straight at her. "You're the one who made the DA coins, aren't you?" Hermione stared at Katrina, and then finally realised what had just been asked and nodded vigorously. Harry smirked and turned to watch how incensed the fanboys were acting. Here _she_ was, talking to someone that hadn't done all those favours for her, and here _they_ were, being utterly ignored!

"I do have to congratulate you; it _was_ a remarkable Protean charm. From what the Sorting Hat said, I really wonder why you're not in Ravenclaw." Katrina extended her hand, and Hermione stared at it, then her mind clicked and she hurriedly shook it. Laughing that tinkling laugh, Katrina bid her goodbye and strolled off, with the fanboys shooting furious glances Hermione's way, although she did not notice as she stared off into space, right hand unconsciously rubbing against the palm of her left hand, the one that she had used to shake hands with Katrina.

Harry laughed, the sound jogging Hermione out of her trance. She blushed as she realised what she had been doing, and leapt out of her seat and rushed away, then hurried back as she realised she had forgotten her book bag. Ron was gazing disconsolately into space, and Harry really wondered if Ron liked Katrina or Hermione… He exited the Great Hall, when he heard someone call his name.

"Harry!" It was Cho, hurrying to Harry's side.

"Hey, Cho." He answered.

"I'm really sorry about accusing you about Hermione… I guess that's kind of impossible, hey?" Harry stared at Cho. "What are you talking about? I mean, I'm not with her, but what do you mean by impossible?" Cho looked at him suspiciously. "Surely you noticed it from where you were sitting! Hermione was totally scatter-brained when Katrina was talking to her!"

Harry looked at Cho in utter horror. If Cho had seen it from the Ravenclaw table, then who else had? Hermione, although she constantly said to the contrary, could and would be affected by how the rest of the school would react about her being seemingly 'different'. "Uh… I have to go, bye!" Harry rushed away up the stairs, leaving Cho behind. If Harry had glanced back, he would have seen her sporting a distinctly ugly look on her face.


	4. Chapter Four

Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices – Chapter Four – Cruel Words

by Katherine Chan

A/N: Well, the last chapter ended quite well. I'm sure that you all can see where I'm going in the romance department, but let me remind you that all of my stories – bar one – are all about how the main character _doesn't_ get the girl in the end. It's all unrequited love, all pure and utterly unpolluted angst. I haven't actually got the entire story plotted out as to who gets with who or whatever, because I'm just writing the story as I go, the plan being pretty much just the foundations for the story. Perhaps Hermione _will_ 'get with' Katrina, or perhaps it's another character… Note that I **_will not write yaoi_**,so for those of you hoping that Harry will fall in love with Ron (and make an even longer love chain) or with Draco (you sick minded brats! He hates Harry!), then shoo!

Chapter Four, unseal!

"… she was just staring at Katrina all during dinner, and when Katrina…"

"… she couldn't even shake hands!"

"… what's wrong with her?"

"… oh yeah, she's a mudblood… that explains things…"

"… Father says that's another reason why we shouldn't let those filthy mudbloods in: they're perverted!"

"But come on, she went out with that Viktor Krum! She's not… you know…"

"You never know… I mean, did you see how she was looking at Katrina?"

The hushed whispers, some deliberately loud enough for Hermione to hear as she passed, but to Harry's surprise, she didn't snap at anyone, she didn't blush. The only hint that she heard them was that she pretended she hadn't, looking straight ahead, eyes not straying to the left or right. Whenever she saw Katrina in the hallways, Katrina would smile and wave, but Hermione would only nod curtly in response.

Harry, Hermione and Ron lingered after the latest DA meeting, Ron wanting to indirectly confront Hermione about the issue of Katrina by asking Hermione out to test her response, and Harry there for emotional support. Or so that was the plan, had Katrina not also hung about. When she made it clear enough that she wished to talk to Hermione, Ron and Harry left the Room of Requirement where they held their DA meetings. They pulled out Extendable Ears, an invention that Ron's older twin brothers, Fred and George had come up with. Plugging one end in their ears, the other end trailed under the door.

"… what's happening, Hermione? You're acting all cold and forbidding, nothing like the Hermione I know-"

"You know nothing about me, Katrina. Nothing." Hermione snapped.

There was a long silence.

"On the contrary, Hermione, I know a lot more about you than you think. It's you who knows nothing about me, and I'm seriously wondering why you used to look at me like… like-"

"I know you were the masked girl."

Another long silence.

"Ah… I suppose that Harry Potter peeked through the curtains around my bed. You three are great friends. Why don't you look at either of them? I'm sure things will be much less complicated for you, I'm sure."

"What would you know about this? And do you think it's easy to transfer your heart from one person to another?" Hermione wept, voice quivering. "Let me go!" It seemed that Katrina had tried to comfort Hermione.

Another long silence, punctuated by Hermione's sobs.

"I know because… You are not the only one to have experienced what it is like to be told that you shouldn't love someone. And I'm not telling you that you can't love girls, that you can't love me. I'm telling you it's better if you didn't…" Footsteps, Katrina was walking to the door.

"Who are you? How come you knew who Harry was in Diagon Alley, but then you acted like you didn't know him here?" The footsteps paused.

"I am Katrina Dolohov, the great maker of Lightning Strikes…" Hermione snorted. "Not that, you… you…" As Hermione searched for the right words, Katrina answered the question Hermione wanted answered. "I pretended because it meant that Harry would never see the connection between my having told him in Diagon Alley that I was from Australia and me transferring here from Australia."

"But why? Why did you have to pretend?"

Katrina sighed. "Because I didn't want anyone to know I was the masked girl, Hermione. Surely you know that."

Hermione made a half-choking half-laughing noise, and she muttered, "Then what are you?" Harry and Ron only picked it up from the excellent reception of the Extendable Ears, and they weren't expecting Katrina to also hear it and even less to answer it.

"I am… a part human with certain genetic variations that… endow me with certain powers that normal people can never possess. Part human in that my father was 'from the stars', or so my witch mother told me… You don't know what it's like to not belong anywhere, Hermione Granger, even though you _are_ a mudblood…"

Harry and Ron yanked the ends of the Extendable Ears as they heard Katrina approaching the door. She left the room and smiled at them as she passed, and the pair hurried back into the Room of Requirement, to see Hermione sobbing amongst the cushions they normally used when practicing Stunning. Consoling people was definitely not one of Harry's or Ron's strong points, and it took almost an hour before they returned to Gryffindor Tower.

The next morning, Hermione opened her copy of the _Daily Prophet_ and stared at the front page for a few minutes before her mind comprehended what she was seeing and she let out a shriek.

_Dementors Ally With He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named_

_Yesterday evening, the Dementors of Azkaban abandoned their posts to join He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, along with the then still imprisoned Death Eaters. _

_The army of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is currently reported to consist of seventy-six Death Eaters, over three hundred Dementors and a variety of other dangerous creatures._

The article went on and on, with photos of all of the Death Eaters and a short bio of each of them, and what to do if they were spotted, and also how to deal with several of the various dangerous magical creatures in Voldemort's army.

Harry glanced over at the Slytherin table, where most of them were looking rather pleased. He saw Katrina had finally been left alone, perhaps because they wondered if she was someone they could trust with the secret that their parents were Death Eaters. None of the Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff or Gryffindor fanboys dared approach the Slytherin table, and Harry realised that everyone in the room was whispering about the newest development, including the professors up at the staff table.

Signs appeared on the noticeboards, forbidding anyone to roam the grounds after dark, not even groups, unless there was a teacher supervising. Hogsmeade trips had all been cancelled, and Quidditch training sessions had to have a teacher supervising at all times.

Professor Nørskï began teaching them all sorts of defensive magic, ranging from raising a protective bubble similar to that which Dumbledore had used in the fiasco only the week before, to a blast of magic to repel attacks and also attack at the same time. Professor Snape taught them how to brew potions that when thrown inside a breakable container, the contents would explode upon impact, the results of which varied from freezing the target to burning them to a crisp. Professor McGonagall instructed them on how to transfigure any object into a working broomstick on which one could escape away on. Professor Flitwick trained them on how to charm a whole group of people into a peaceful slumber.

Weeks passed, with the newspapers reporting various unexplained disappearances, and also the deaths that were marked with the Dark Mark, the calling card of the Death Eaters. Parvati Patil and her twin sister, Padma – who was in Ravenclaw – received owls telling them that their father had been killed; Hannah Abbott broke down in tears one morning with an owl informing her that her uncle and aunt had been found gibbering from the after-effects of the Cruciatus curse… The morning post was dreaded by all except for those in Slytherin, and those who knew that news of any strange deaths in their family would not be reported, them being Muggles.

Harry, Hermione, Ron and Ginny all expected the attack on Hogwarts to be soon… There was no way that Voldemort couldn't resist the lure of defeating Dumbledore and killing Harry, him being at full strength, fear weakening Hogwarts' students. The school governors had considered sending all the students home, but when the parents argued that it was actually safer within Hogwarts than outside, the topic was dropped immediately.

Katrina no longer smiled nor acknowledged Harry or Hermione in the hallways, instead, she went about as if she could not see them at all. Reports from the fanboys who were trying to focus more on her than to contemplate what horrors awaited them in the daily news informed everyone that she was always on the roof of the North Tower, keeping a constant lookout whenever she could.

Every morning, Harry wondered if Voldemort would attack in an hour, in a few hours, that night, the next morning, the next week… As they trained in magical combat, weeks slipped by so fast and so filled with traumatic notices of deaths in the families, that no-one knew if they wanted to fight when the time came: their families were dropping one by one, and they were sure they would be the last one left…

Harry stared out the window as he waited his team's turn to take on Professor Nørskï, and he watched as brightly coloured birds flew past the window, cheeping happily. "Carefree…" he whispered, then turned when he realised that Professor Nørskï was trying to catch his attention.

"Harry…" Harry stopped, and waved Ron and Hermione away, telling them to keep walking to the Gryffindor Tower.

"Yes?" He enquired, turning, and frowned at the empty hallway.

"Up here." He glanced up, and gazed in awe as Katrina leapt down from the roof and bounced from wall to wall to slow down her momentum until she reached the ground.

"What do you want?" He asked brusquely, not really respecting her as much as he used to, especially after she had called Hermione a mudblood.

"I just want to warn you that Voldemort's going to attack soon… Next week as a matter of fact, Harry Potter." He stared at her use of his surname.

"How do you know _that_?! Unless you're a Death Eater…" Harry reflexively stepped backwards, wand drawn. "If something looks like a dog, moves like a dog and barks like a dog, it's a dog… And you talk like a Death Eater _and_ you're in Slytherin!"

"No, it's nothing like that." Katrina hurriedly explained, hands held out palms up. "Let's just say that… I know whenever something bad is going to happen… Like an attack. How do you reckon I managed to change into my fighting uniform so quickly last time? I was wearing it underneath my school uniform for the entire day. Trust me on this, please."

"Why are you telling me this? I know he's going to attack soon. It's not like there's anything to be gained by knowing he's attacking next week." Harry looked at her suspiciously.

"Because… I won't be able to help any of you next week, because another one of those assassins is going to attack at the very same time. I have to leave Hogwarts, draw him away. Just be careful on Tuesday."

"Tuesday?! That's in four days!" She did not answer as she walked away, nor did she look back at Harry.

"You're kidding me, aren't you, Harry?"

"No, that's what she told me."

"I don't believe it."

"Yes you can, Ron, you just don't want to. I don't want to either, but we know he's going to attack soon. And if she says she's going to be attacked, then I think we have to believe her. I mean, she was wearing her fighting clothes and mask at the exact times she gets attacked…"

"Just great. Just great. We're being attacked in four days and there's nothing we can do about it. _He's_ coming to kill us all! We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna-"

"SHUT UP, RON! We are _not_ going to die. Why do you think they used up all our classes to teach us how to fight?"

Friday finished, Saturday came and went, Sunday lagged by, Monday crawled by… and Tuesday arrived. All the students were already buzzing about the disappearance of Katrina, and it seemed that she hadn't informed Dumbledore about her plans as all of the teachers were looking frantic, and questioning students if they had seen her. Breakfast finished, the first period crawled past, the second one stumbled into oblivion… the third one finished, and Harry was seriously doubting if Voldemort was actually going to attack.

"I mean, she could have gotten her 'battle readings' mixed up and you know, thought there was going to be an attack here when there wasn't." They debated the issue over lunch, over the next few sessions they shared, and were still talking about it during dinner.

Suddenly, a huge blast was heard from the Entrance Hall, and the occupants of the portraits hanging in the Entrance Hall ran screaming into the Great Hall. "He's here! He's here!" They screamed. All the students began screaming – except the Slytherins, of course – and crowded to the side of the Great Hall opposite the main doors.

Dumbledore whispered something, and a small silver bird flew out a side-door. The doors exploded, and the students began screaming anew. Harry drew his wand, and squared his shoulders. "Get behind the furniture! Don't just stand there in full view!" yelled Professor Nørskï. They scrambled to her order, just as the first red beams of Stunners came shooting through the dust cloud.

A wash of cold swamped them all, and Harry heard screams again, the mist was enveloping him… "NO! _EXPECTO PATRONUM!_" A silver stag shot out of his wand, just as Dumbledore and Professor Nørskï uttered the same spell, their own Patronuses joining Harry's to chase Voldemort's Dementors back from the door. The chill disappeared, and everyone breathed easier, but tensed up immediately as curse spells were bellowed by various Death Eaters rushing in through the door.

"_Genjutsa!_" Several of the Death Eaters fell to their knees, wands slipping out of their hands and clattering to the floor as they began to magically hallucinate of an enraged Voldemort out to kill them. "_Stupefy!_" "_Impedimenta!_" "_Silencio!_" Spells were cast left right and centre, and then the side-door the silver bird had flown out of burst open, letting in the now giant Blast-Ended Skrewts, all of whom moved straight to their carers.

Malfoy – Draco Malfoy, that is – began to laugh, coldly, and attacked his fellow classmates, quickly joined by Theodore Nott, Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, and several other children of Death Eaters. Their own Blast-Ended Skrewts were not very grateful to them, and thus moved to protect Hagrid. Malfoy and his fellow traitorous Slytherins suddenly realised what was happening: the Blast-Ended Skrewts were intent on killing them, they, who had attacked their carers! Screaming, they fought their way to their parents' sides, just as Aurors began attacking from behind. Voldemort appeared in the thick of it all, and flicked his wand. A great line of golden fire stretched out, intent on wrapping around all of them all, to kill and destroy…

At least, it would have had not a masked girl appeared right in front of him and slashed at him with a katana-style sword. The magical rope disappeared as he staggered backwards, black blood dripping from the deep wound stretching from the top of where his right hip was supposed to be and to his left shoulder. One of the Death Eaters turned and raced so quickly at Katrina, it was almost like they were one of those assassins out to get her…

It was. The pair whirled around, flinging energy blasts at each other, sometimes landing other times not, kicking, punching, striking, and slicing at each other, the Death Eater having conjured her own sword. Leaping apart, they gauged each other from a distance, then roared at each other, the gap disappearing as they engaged in battle yet again.

Harry stunned and hexed and cursed and jinxed, knowing there was nothing he could do to help her. Suddenly, he heard a familiar high and cold voice suddenly filled with terror.

"What… WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?! YOU'RE GOING TO KILL US ALL, YOU IDIOT!" Voldemort screamed at the Death Eater, who was forming a giant energy ball. "STOP!"

The Death Eater laughed. "Oh no, I won't, Tom Riddle. You must think me stupid to have joined your ranks just to help your aims… I'm not here to help you, I'm here to help myself!" The Death Eater raised her hands above her head, and was about to throw the energy ball when she screamed, clutching at her upper left arm, where Harry knew the Dark Mark was burned into her flesh.

"You must think _me_ stupid if I don't have anything to stop Death Eaters from betraying me." A deadly silence as everyone watched the Death Eater flail in pain on the floor, as Voldemort activated some kind of death seal. Katrina moved, faster than lightning, and the Death Eaters were forced to concentrate on her as she disappeared from in front of them and appeared right behind them, knocking them out with her bare hands.

Voldemort, seeing this, killed the Death Eater, who collapsed, wisps of grey smoke enveloping her, and then waved his wand. The surviving Death Eaters, both conscious and unconscious, were enveloped in magic, and when the motes of glowing light disappeared, they were nowhere to be seen. Katrina landed and removed her mask, and all of the students gasped as they realised who she was.

"Yeah, me. Little old me." She sauntered over to where one of the unconscious Death Eaters lay and removed the mask. Picking up the Death Eater, she showed everyone the face. "And yet another 'me'." Everyone gaped at the identical face, as Katrina muttered "Clones." She unmasked all of the dead Death Eaters left behind, but only that one looked exactly like her.

Snape approached, flask of Veritaserum in hand. Katrina nodded, and held her hand out for it, then took a small swig. Her eyes blanked out and she swayed a little, but then she regained her balance.

"Can you hear me?" Dumbledore asked.

"Yes." Monotonous, nowhere near as melodic as her normal voice was.

"Are you a Death Eater?"

"No."

"Are you Katrina Elena Dolohov?"

"Yes."

"Why does that Death Eater look exactly like you?"

"Because we are both clones of the same person, and the genetic modifications for our outside appearances were not changed."

"Clones? Of who?"

"I don't know."

"Why don't you know?"

"Because none of us know."

The teachers looked at each other.

"If you're clones of the same person, then how come she's the only Death Eater?"

"Because the personality she was given is different to mine, and most of the others."

"Most? Are there anymore of you that are Death Eaters?"

"Not that I know of."

"What kind of magic is it that you use, apart from the one we can use as well?"

"It's a type of power you carry within you… We've just got the genetics to have better skill at using it and more of it as well… Except the thing I use to travel through shadows… That's just one of the powers I was given as a clone."

Harry was personally appalled at the public interrogation. How could Dumbledore ask her personal questions while the entire school was listening on? Including those that had tried to attack their fellow students.

"I think that's enough." Madam Pomfrey sat Katrina down by a wall and began tending to her many wounds as Professor Dumbledore stalked over to where the Slytherins were bound by ropes conjured by some of the senior students. His eyes radiated power, his very stance and poise spoke volumes of the fury and sense of betrayal he was feeling and the Slytherins cowered in fear.

The Aurors flooded in through the door and identified all of the killed Death Eaters and moved to arrest the traitorous Slytherin students. They wavered between whether the students were too young to be arrested, then finally decided that they weren't, considering most of them were of age.

Harry heard Dumbledore telling them that they were all sleeping in the Great Hall tonight, he saw Dumbledore fixing the damage done to the Hall, then conjuring several hundred purple squashy sleeping bags, like he had three years ago.

The fear he should have felt earlier finally flooded through his system, and the same thing happened to most of the students around him. Most of them had been functioning on adrenaline during the battle, and were now feeling the backlash. Crawling into a sleeping bag, Harry quivered in terror, awaiting his turn for a check-over from Madam Pomfrey. It was only hours later that he fell asleep, dreaming of breaking and destroying buildings and killing innocent people, casting the Dark Mark into the sky…

He jerked awake, his scar burning red hot, and he knew that what he had just seen in his dreams was what Voldemort had been doing, had been seeing. Disgust and horror flooded through him, the two emotions causing cold sweat to break out on his skin.

As he scrambled to get out of the stuffy sleeping bag, he realised that there was someone else awake. Katrina was leaning against the wall, sitting on top of her sleeping back, and examining the wounds on her hands. The moonlight shining through the window was too bright for Harry's darkness adjusted eyes, and he couldn't see her hands properly, except at that moment, Katrina dropped her hands to her side.

Harry gasped… tattoos _writhing_ along her hands and arms, shaped like wolves chasing each other in the forests… She glanced up and Harry looked away as she hurriedly slid inside of her sleeping bag to hide her arms. Exhaustion finally settled in, and Harry slipped into his sleeping bag, eyes refusing to stay open, he fell asleep… to dream of snakes swallowing their tails, scorpions stinging themselves and wolves ripping themselves apart, powerful jaws ripping even as they howled in pain…

"She's got tattoos on her arms?"

"I don't know if they're tattoos or something else… I mean, they were _wriggling_ on her arms…"

"And they looked like wolves, did you say?"

"_Yes_. How many times have I told you? Three, four?"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry Harry, but it's… _strange_. It didn't look like the Dark Mark, did it?"

"No, it didn't… And anyway, she helped fight against the Death Eaters, so I doubt she could be working for Voldemort."

"Oh, I don't know, Harry. You saw how Macnair was working for the Ministry… It could all have been a ploy!"

"I don't think so, Ron. She just put seven of them into Auror custody; do you think that would be something Voldemort would plan?"

"Well… well… that's exactly the point! She's so powerful that Voldemort doesn't need those Death Eaters! It could all have been an act for her to get into our good books, and then… and then… you know…"

Hermione was looking at Ron as if he was insane, but Harry wasn't so sure. "Don't be ridiculous, Ron. She almost _killed_ Voldemort!"

"A-ha! She _almost_ killed You-Know-Who, not _did_. It could all just be-"

"An act?" A voice cut in, its owner standing right behind Harry, Hermione and Ron, causing all three of them to freeze as they recognized the voice. Katrina smiled sadly. "If you distrust people so easily, I find it rather hard to believe that you managed to find it in yourselves to trust each other." The cutting remark shot through their terrified minds, and not even Hermione could think fast enough to come up with a riposte, even as Katrina strode away.

"Are you two still arguing?" Ron asked Hermione. She scowled. "That has nothing to do with this. If there were one of us that she would have a real reason to dislike, it would be you, Ron." With that, she flounced off, leaving Harry and Ron behind, staring incredulously.

"Look… look at… is she alright?" Ron spluttered. Harry sighed and dragged Ron to the Gryffindor Tower.

"Ooh, look, it's Potty and the Weasel! I wonder if they're like the Mudblood?" Harry stopped, gritting his teeth and let go of Ron's arm, his right hand plunging into his robe pocket for his wand. Ron did the same, pulling out his own wand. "I know you're there, Malfoy!" A cold laugh. "He knows we're here! Quick, hide, or they'll tie us to chairs and bring out the whips and wax!" The jeering voice rebounded against the corridor, echoing eerily.

"Why is he still here? Wasn't he supposed to have been arrested, along with the other Slytherins who betrayed us?"

"Ooh, ooh! We're supposed to have been arrested, Goyle! Come on Crabbe, let's go show them we're are definitely not 'arrested'." The sound of footfalls, and Harry and Ron whirled around just as the familiar white blonde hair appeared around the corner.

"You want to know why we're here? Well, Father bailed us out. Said we were subject to peer-pressure and that we weren't in our right minds."

"But… wasn't… if he was caught-"

"Did you see my father, Weasel?" Harry and Ron thought back to the fight in the Grand Hall, and realised with a shock that they had not seen anyone that looked remotely like Lucius Malfoy. Draco laughed and strolled off, Crabbe and Goyle chuckling along with him. Harry and Ron thrust their wands back into their pockets and hurried to the Gryffindor Tower, where they told the other Gryffindors of what had just transpired.

"They can't be! That's not justice served!"

"I'll wring that ferret's neck the next time I see him, that little-"

For the rest of the day, Ron continued to make threatening comments, most in relation to violently bludgeoning Malfoy to death with a blunt and rusty knife.

To my reviewers:

What's a 'Mary Sue'? I know I probably sound really, _really_ dumb asking that, but seriously… Never heard that expression before in my life. Oh and yeah, for those of you who read an 'extensive' range of literary types (such as manga), yes, this is a bit ­too heavily influenced by Naruto… I'm sorry, but currently, Naruto is like a novelty to me.


	5. Chapter Five

Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices – Chapter Five – Hopes and Dreams

by Katherine Chan

A/N: Let's talk about this story.

Hmm… the falling out between Katrina and Hermione, the fracturing of the Harry-Hermione-Ron trio, and Malfoy and his cronies have been bailed out by Draco's father… Who was strangely absent from the battle that his son was arrested in…?!

Anyway, the reason for the huge gap in updates is that I got grounded in the second week of holidays, so no internet connection and so much surveillance that I haven't had much time to type the story and check it. Also, in the third and last week of holidays, I had to go to this workshop for a week, that is, one 9 hour day, four 10 hour days and two 12 hour days doing physics. Sounds like fun, hey?

Not really, but at least I met this _really_ beautiful girl, made some new friends and whatnot, so yeah, it wasn't an entire waste of time.

The release of this chapter and chapter four is to celebrate my reconnection to the net (back to school, _cable_).

Let the story begin!

A black hood, face in shadow, and no matter how Harry shines the torch at the person – within the bounds of politeness, of course – he can't make out the face.

The figure shifts, the black skivvy moving with its movements like a second skin. 'I'm sorry…' the figure whispers, and as the face and clothes shift into another's, Harry flinches, the voice is so familiar, but he can't remember exactly who's…

Hermione, this time, head bowed as her eternally wavy hair – unless she uses magic potion – flows over her shoulders and on her torso. A choked sob, pink clad shoulders jerking and shaking as she fights back tears, sadness, something… 'I'm sorry, Harry, I couldn't stop them…!'

Harry stared as Hermione's face changed, the colour of her clothes shifting through the colours of the spectrum and finally settling into a deep indigo.

This has to be a dream, Harry thought. It has to be, because it can't be Polyjuice Potion… It has to be a dream… Let me wake up, let me wake up, let me-

'I'm sorry, Harry, I couldn't stop them… They killed G… Gin… They killed Ginny as well…" He stared at the face of a crying Ron and Harry realised that he seemed to be lying down, or so it seemed judging from how the figure, Hermione and Ron all seemed to be at right angles to him…

Harry grunted as the nerves in his back began registering something cold and hard, something like smoothed marble. What was he doing, lying down on something like that? And what was he doing with a cloth over his entire body? And it was heavy too, like a shroud, a funeral shr-

"Holy shit!" Harry jerked upright into a sitting position, the remnants of the dream falling to pieces around him as the black satin slipped down to pool around his legs. Gasps of horror and the sounds of someone fainting and falling unnoticed to the floor with a slap.

He glanced around wildly, and swung his legs around, off of the blue veined white marble altar. Ron and Hermione stumbled backwards from this 'apparition', and Harry realised with a jolt that they were wearing the same clothes as in the dream; even the bloodstains were the same…

Blood. That meant a fight, some kind of physical altercation… As Harry's mind went into overdrive, he felt someone approaching from behind and he whirled around just as something else clicked into place.

The place was filled with people, like a funeral… He had been dreaming about Ron and Hermione and some person he knew… The dream Ron had said someone had killed Ginny 'too'…

Dumbledore had his wand levelled at Harry, even as Harry stared in horror at the satin-enveloped body lying on an altar next to the one he had been lying on… He stumbled over to the body, and pulled slightly on the cloth.

The satin slithered with a hiss to the ground, but Harry didn't hear it. All he could comprehend was the long bright orange hair, the scrapes and cuts that had been wiped clean of blood… A twinge in his neck, and Harry brought his hand up, only to realise with a shock that there were needles sticking straight through one side of his neck to the other. Fresh blood was oozing out, coating his fingers in the glistening dark substance.

As the blood rushed from his head, he realised that he had died. Only a momentary one, but the shock was enough for him to faint from lack of oxygen to his brain.

"Poppy… would you have any idea why Harry woke up, when we were sure he had definitely died?"

"I'm not sure, Albus… But-" The sound of a bed creaking as someone in the bed next to his rolled over.

"I know why." The fog in Harry's brain began clearing immediately. Her voice! He fought to make a connection between two memories that slipped through his mind's fingers like the proverbial soap.

"You should be resting, Katrina. You weren't supposed to stand at the… at the… service… You've lost too much blo-"

"I know why he's still alive. Those needles…" Katrina grunted and tenderly brought her left hand to a bandaged wound in her right shoulder. "As weapons, they have a low chance of killing, unlike daggers or arrows. Muggles even use them as acupuncture tools… Anyway, there are certain points in the human body that… ugh..."

Katrina swung her legs over the side of her bed, pulling herself into an upright position. "…that when hit in the right combination, only with your bare hands, can force someone into an excruciating pain, so bad that they can't move… And if you puncture that point with a piercing weapon, a person can die."

She sighed. "I remember once… My friend and I, we were fighting against a group of people just like the person who threw those needles… They were probably all trained at the same place… Anyway, one of them threw one at my friend, intending to kill, which punctured here-" She indicated a point near her shoulder, between the collar bone and a rib. "-and missed the pressure point by a centimetre or so… My friend still 'died', but he woke up much like Mr. Potter did here, an hour or so later, alive and kicking."

Harry blinked slowly, as, for what seemed like the hundredth time, he awoke in the Sick Bay from some battle with the forces of Voldemort or Voldemort himself. "He's pretty lucky, you know. People who use those needles as weapons in a planned attack are reasonably confident of their accuracy, considering, as I said before, those don't really have a high chance of killing. And I'm doubting that that man really intended to miss, since he has no reason to feel guilty for killing someone he doesn't know."

"What are you talking about?! Everyone feels guilty for kill- Oh…" Hermione blinked. _Voldemort_ didn't feel guilty about killing people he didn't know, and his men were probably the same.

"Exactly. And when you train to be an assassin, a fighter, anything to do with physically hurting anyone else… The only way you can truly become something like that is if you have the strength to destroy you own heart and kill someone else. That's something you can't get from living in peaceful times, and now, it seems that the situation calls for even students to become cold-blooded killer-"

"No. No student of Hogwarts is a killer, and I am sure that all of us here wish for that to remain so forever."

Katrina snorted, and mimicked Dumbledore. "'No student of Hogwarts is a killer'… Have you forgotten those Death Eaters _I_ killed? Or am I not counted as a student of Hogwarts?" Her callous tone and the sneer in her voice forcibly reminded Harry of Malfoy, but surely… Surely Katrina wasn't… wasn't like that? Right?

Professor Dumbledore blinked slowly. "Under the circumstances, you had no choice but to-"

"'Under the circumstances' my ass, _Professor_. Unless you're saying that if anything like what just happened a few hours ago were to happen again, and if any of the other students were to '**accidentally**' kill someone, they wouldn't be a killer? And those Death Eaters, they weren't the first who have fallen by my hand."

A wave of pain struck, and her frame shuddered as she gritted her teeth, hand clutching at her left side. A trickle of something dark oozed out from the corner of her mouth, something that glistened… Madam Pomphrey rushed to Katrina's side, gently pulling Katrina down into a lying position.

"Tell me where it hurts, dear… Oh!" Harry sat up, unnoticed, and he stared in horror at Katrina's chin, which was dripping in blood which was coming from her mouth. She brought her hands together, and a golden glow bathed her hands as she placed them over the place she had been clutching in pain.

Madam Pomphrey wiped away the blood from Katrina's mouth with a cloth, and brought a cup of water and a bucket for Katrina to rinse her mouth. As Madam Pomphrey and Professor Dumbledore moved over to the side, conversing in hushed, whispers, Harry struggled to hear what they were saying.

"… internal injuries, but nothing like I've seen before. It's like they're magical wounds, but the Death Eater… you said he just struck her with his bare hands! How can that be magical?"

"You saw how she healed herself, Poppy. Whoever she is, there are Death Eaters with powers just like hers… A magic that we've never seen before, and no visible weak point…"

"That's because there isn't a weak point…" Katrina muttered, and Madam Pomphrey and Dumbledore whirled around.

"You should be resting! You need to conserve your energy…"

"There are no weak points to our magic and our way of fighting, Professor. Just a matter of who's got the skill and the power to back them up." She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth as another wave of pain washed over her. A minute passed as everyone stared at her prone profile, and then her eyes opened again.

"This Voldemort… I don't know who he is, but I'm not really sure why someone with my magic would join his ranks as Death Eater, as his servant. They'd rather be an ally, an equal not subject to his orders… Or at least that's what I thought was the case… But now…" She closed her eyes again, and decided to place some more of her healing magic onto another internal injury.

"But anyway, if you'll allow me, Professor, I'll send a message to some of my friends, and they can come and help out here. I wasn't expecting something like this to happen, but I guess not all things go to plan…" Professor Dumbledore blinked, and Harry narrowed his eyes. Plan? What plan? What was she talking about…?

"Voldemort seems to be recruiting more and more of these fighters that possess your particular brand of magic. Perhaps it would be wise to ask for assistance from some of your friends." Dumbledore conceded, although Harry wasn't so sure. What if these friends of hers, when they had defeated Voldemort, would they… 'Bossa nova' and so on and so forth? 'Here comes the new boss, same as the old one'?

Maybe I'm just being paranoid, Harry thought, as Madam Pomphrey told him to go back to sleep. An electronic beep, and Harry stared as Katrina began talking in some European sounding language, into a small oddly shaped piece of metal, one side of which was bathing her face in soft light.

She finished, turned it off and slipped it into her pocked. Harry was curious about the strange device. "I… I thought electricity doesn't work here, apart from small basic things like our watches… And that definitely isn't a 'simple electronic device'."

Katrina laughed, but stopped quickly and grimaced, clutching at her side. "Ouch… Let's just say that we've managed to figure out a way of shielding electronic objects from magic, and we discovered that magic doesn't affect electric signals." She grimaced again. "We have to rest now, you especially."

Harry snorted. "_Me_?! What about you? You're the one who's got internal injuries that even Madam Pomphrey can't heal!"

She smiled. "Yes, but someone put into a temporary death, like you were, must rest for awhile before their body returns to normal… There is no magic that can truly heal you entirely of something like; you'll have to have some extensive rehabilitation too."

"But… Earlier, when I woke up… I was able to move normally… I didn't even realise what was happening until I felt the needles through my neck!"

"That's because the nerves in your body were slightly deadened, and you didn't actually feel the pain… Although now, after Madam Pomphrey's healed all she can, you might have a bit of trouble walking, lifting things… stuff like that…" She stretched, but quickly brought her hands back down, wincing slightly.

"Pity Christina can't do healing … I'm not really crash-hot at healing myself when it's something as bad as this…" She sighed again, and had settled down and was half-asleep when her words sank into Harry's mind.

"Christina? One of your friends is here?" He burst out, not realising Katrina was almost asleep.

"Hmm? Yeah, she's here…" Katrina mumbled sleepily. "She just arrived in Britain for some business matter and-"

"And that has been put on hold, since _your_ safety is of the utmost importance, Ange- Katrina." A gentle voice scolded her, as its owner stepped down from the window sill. "You should have alerted us earlier of the situation; we would have dropped everything to come to your aid. These adversaries are not to be trifled with, and even you require our aid, if you are to remain within the bounds all of us must obey."

Christina, long ruddy brown hair tied back into a ponytail and clad in a smart blue power-suit, shook her head slightly and clucked slightly like a mother hen. Katrina yawned slightly but winced and brought her fingers to rest lightly on her right side. "Dear, dear, me… what'll it take until you learn the lesson, Kat? One of these days, you'll really get yourself killed, and where will that leave you? It'll be like how you were before, Iki-"

"Enough!" snapped Katrina, and Harry was shocked by how Christina became suddenly docile and submissive. "That is in the past, and surely you should know by now how I feel about the situation. That I live solely to protect – that is my purpose in life, and to die for that cause is to-"

"-is to die with honour… yeah, yeah, Katrina. Lie still, won't you, so I can heal that _dreadful_ injury you have there." Another voice, belonging to a man this time, who had appeared suddenly at the foot of Katrina's bed. His short cerulean hair swished in a nonexistent wind as he stepped towards Katrina, arms outstretched with his palms facing downwards. A bright azure glow later and Katrina's face was relaxed and her muscles were no longer tensed. "Thanks mate. Where were you, when I called?"

The man smiled gently, and the trio began babbling in the language Katrina had been using on the communicator. Harry's eyes struggled to stay open, but he found himself thinking about how soft the bed was and how soothing their voices' were and just how warm it was…

"…another strike! Our contacts report that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has assembled an even greater host of Death Eaters!"

"They'll attack in a few minutes… What do we do about the students?!"

"…can't have them getting involved again, can we?"

"You can't stop me from fighting, Professor. You _know_ that this time, there will be more Death Eaters with my brand of magic, and I know that you know that without me, you are dead."

"If we let her fight, then I'm sure Mr. _Potter_ will be wanting to join in, I suppose?"

"That's enough, Severus. The students are an essential part of Hogwarts' defences, they are _needed_…"

"Capture him!"

"Harry! Wake up, please wake up… you can't die…!"

"We've suffered casualties… Dolohov is in a critical condition with several internal injuries of peculiar origin, Caster has a fractured skull and some broken ribs and… and Harry Potter… he's… he's dead, Professor…"

Harry woke suddenly, instinct commanding him into an upright position, the better to gaze around at the sun-light flooded Hospital Wing. Or at least that's what his mind tried to tell his muscles to do, but all he achieved was a kind of weak pull up for two inches, then he flopped back down onto the bed.

"What the…?" He muttered as he tried to get up again. Several quickly smothered laughs burst out beside him, and Harry, managing to tilt his head slightly saw that Christina, Katrina and the strangely blue-haired man were all fighting to keep straight faces. "Feeling okay there?" Katrina managed to make out, amidst a fit of giggles. "I'm sorry, but we just can't help laughing!" she gasped out.

Harry glared, but for the life of him couldn't sit up. "Stop laughing! It isn't funny when you can't even sit up! I bet I can't even walk!" At that, all three of them shut up and sobered quickly. The man slid off of his chair and stood next to Harry.

"My name's Anthony… I know Katrina said that you'll take awhile before you get back to normal, but I'm of the opinion that a full-body check-up will be more accurate than a single glance. She may have good eyes – that's an understatement, mind you – but there's really nothing like a trained medic-"

"-giving you a full once-over… Yadda yadda yadda, we've heard all of that already, Anthony… You can check him all you want; you won't find anything I haven't already found. I _do_ have both of 'the eyes'."

"Whatever." Anthony held both of his palms out in an elliptical position, the ocean blue glow appearing again as he passed his hands parallel to Harry's form, and Harry stared at the crimson dots that appeared all over his body, shining through his Infirmary-issue gown and varying in brightness. Anthony ummed and ahhed, and Harry could see that Katrina was fighting to stop herself from bursting into laughter.

"Fine, so there's nothing much we can do, _I'm sorry_, _Katrina_." Anthony pouted childishly and everyone in the room burst into laughter. Madam Pomphrey swept in to find out what was going on, and she stopped abruptly when she spotted Christina and Anthony.

"Who are you? What are you doing to him?" She had noticed the red dots still glowing on Harry, and her wand was raised, pointing straight at Anthony. Katrina sighed slightly. "They're just my current bodyguard, Madam Pomphrey. Anthony here was just seeing if there was anything he could do to help heal Harry, but as I said earlier, there isn't."

Madam Pomphrey quirked an eyebrow at this then pocketed her wand, though she still glared distrustfully at Christina and Anthony. "Where are the others, Christina? I'm sure that after a night, it still wouldn't be just you two who have arrived." Katrina asked, in English. "Oh, I told them to position themselves around the grounds, both inside and outside. There's a few in Hogsmeade, a few on aerial duty and there's a constant patrol. We're the only ones inside of the buildings, though."

Katrina shifted slightly, testing her wounds, and found them to be satisfactorily healed enough. She pulled herself up into an upright position, then gingerly got to her feet. "What about supplies? How long can they survive out there? England isn't anything like Australia or even China; there aren't plenty of natural resources for them to draw on, you know."

Harry stared as Katrina became a military commander, with Christina being the statistician. "Oh, don't worry about that. Each portion is made of three groups, one being on duty, one on reserve and the other travels to gather information and resources. They rotate on a four-day basis, situation 3."

By now, Katrina and Christina had moved to the window, the better to look out onto the grounds. Anthony had slumped into a chair, perhaps he had been on night duty. "Situation 3, eh? That sounds reasonable… How many of us are there out there?" Christina blinked, closed her eyes for a moment, and then opened them again. "Seventy-two, not including Anthony or me." Katrina gazed out for a moment. "Not including me either, right?" Christina nodded.

"Sounds good."

Harry spent weeks getting hold of his movement faculties, but he missed very little of his schoolwork as most people – that is, everyone except the fifths and the sevenths, since major exams still had to go on – were being trained in self-defence, most of which he already knew, thanks to the Defence Association's meetings.

The Gryffindors, especially Hermione and Ron, visited frequently, and to Harry's surprise, as did Cho Chang. The flowers on the bed-stand next to him were always fresh, the perfume so strong that Christina finally cast a transparent cube of magic around it, to ease their streaming eyes and noses. Katrina was out of the Infirmary two weeks after being admitted, while Harry was finally allowed out in the fourth week.

Ron was still slightly wary about Hermione and her personal choices, but with the return of Harry – who was still walking slightly strangely and required the assistance of two people to ensure he didn't fall – they put aside their worries to aid Harry. Wherever Katrina went, the crowd would part, whispers and badly hidden pointing fingers, all of them discussing the last battle, where she had encountered a certain someone…

"Katrina." The voice was soft, yet still audible through the battle screams, the thud of bodies on stone and the steady drip-drip of blood from open wounds.

She whirled around, eyes open and slightly wild from the battle-lust, but also something else… The voice, it was 'her' voice, thought Katrina. There, standing out from all the other Death Eaters, as everything blurred away, this figure was the focus of her vision.

Has to be a clone, can't really be her… She wouldn't hurt a fly, much less me… right?

RIGHT?

Someone attacked Katrina from behind, but the attack merely bounced off of her armour as she hurtled towards the Death Eater, who was also rushing forward, fists clenched and glowing a dull pink. Just like hers, thought Katrina as her own hands pulsed gold.

Impact!, and the pair whirled around, attacking open-hand style, then both of them spotting an opening… Both of them lunging forward to hit each other on the exact same point.

Blood dripped from under Katrina's mask to the floor and also from the Death Eater's mask, as they stood their transfixed by each other's blow.

"Guess that just goes to show I really did teach you, Bree."

"Yeah… Ikiri-sensei. Same openings, same style, same reactions… But I wonder which of us has the stronger body and armour?"

As she said that, Katrina's armour shattered around Bree's hand, just as Katrina's mask slipped off, lubricated by all the blood. Bree brought her free hand to her head, slipped the hood and mask off, and revealed the scarred face that bore little resemblance to the beautiful countenance she used to have.

"You haven't learnt anything after you left, have you?" Katrina was smiling, strangely but still a smile, even as the blood dribbled down her chin and splattered onto Bree's arm and onto the tiles below.

"What are you talking about?" snarled Bree, as she brought her arm back for another strike.

"You've even forgotten things I taught you over and over again…" Katrina grinned even wider, brought her left hand up and…

Flicked Bree on the forehead with her middle finger, sending Bree smashing into several Death Eaters and into the thick stone wall.

"You forgot that with this style… It's weaker if you spread your energy over a large area, like you did with my armour." Katrina paused and spat out some more blood. "You're as bad as a student at the academy, you know."

As Katrina slumped to her knees, one voice was heard above the battle, soft but still audible. "You'd have killed me much earlier if you didn't love me anymore, Ikiri… sempai."

Harry wondered once again how many identities Katrina possessed, and which one was the true one. Shaking his head slightly, as if to clear his mind, he readied himself for the next group duel. After their impromptu testing of their magic skills, the entire of the school – bar most of the Slytherins since all of them had finally been arrested – had been sorted into various groups, depending on their abilities.

For example, Seamus Finnigan, who was much better at Charms then he was at straight-forward duelling, was placed into the group who's job in a crisis was to charm objects into attacking the 'enemies', and to also ensure that any flying debris and or projectiles hit any of the students or teachers.

Dean Thomas was quite good at Transfiguration, and so the group he was placed into had the task of turning objects into rather nasty looking weapons for the Seamus' group to wield, and to also do the reverse just in case the projectile happened to be travelling along a trajectory that would eventually hit a student or teacher.

Harry and Ron were of course placed into the duellers group. About five from each of these groups, including those skilled in Potions, were grouped together to form a small unit, each unit was then looked after by a student who was skilled in all areas – such as Hermione – and occasionally a teacher.

Katrina, Christina and Anthony made up a group on their own, since the other students would just get in the way. They trained elsewhere, but were currently watching as the various groups tussled, the better to view the various strategies of these groups.

Harry cast a bubble of protection around him, just as over twenty Stunners shot straight at him and disintegrated – several of the groups had banded together and were targeting him, since he was one of the most skilled duellists in the school. Parvati Patil then retaliated for him, as did Justin Finch-Fletchley, several of their opponents falling to their spells.

As their unit worked their way through another opposing group, then another and yet another, Ron was hit by a Stunner and he crumpled to the ground. Harry quickly levitated him as he alerted the others, and they retreated to their 'base', where they dropped Ron off. Of course, they could have just revived him on the field, but it was unlikely that a real Death Eater would just Stun one of them and ignore the openings that revealed themselves.

A few hours later, as they emerged from the Great Hall dishevelled and dirty (their bruises and cuts had already been taken care of by the 'healers' in their group), Katrina, Christina and Anthony appeared in from of Hermione, Harry and Ron. Christina and Anthony engaged Harry and Ron in conversation, drawing them away from Katrina and Hermione, of which the latter was stonily glaring at Katrina.

"Now, now, what's with the long face? If you aren't careful, the wind might blow and-"

"Shut up, or I'll… or I'll-"

Katrina laughed. "Or you'll kill me? I don't think you or any wizard or witch that ever lived could even mark me, let alone land a fatal blow. But seriously, why are you so angry with me? Or is this normal for you?"

Hermione death-stared at Katrina, who only grinned. "You think you're so high and mighty and _cool_, don't you, Katrina? Or is it Ikiri?"

Katrina's expression didn't change at all; she didn't miss a beat. "Oh, I don't know. It could be Katrina, it could be Ikiri; it all depends on you all, doesn't it? But you haven't answered my question yet, Hermione." Katrina sobered, her expression becoming more serious. "Why do you look at me like that?"

"Because you were just playing with me all that time…! I heard what Bree said, I heard what she said afterwards, when you'd fainted!"

Katrina quirked an eyebrow. "Oh really? But you've been death-staring me for a long time, before my fight with Bree. Spill, Granger."

"Or what? You'll hit me? You don't know how to deal with anything except through violence, do you?" Hermione spat, before she realised that the hall was devoid of everyone except the two of them. Her face paled slightly and her hand drifted to her wand.

Katrina sighed slightly, her temper beginning to fray. "And that just goes to show that you don't know me at all, Hermione. How do you think I got into the broom industry? I could've just gone and robbed the local bank but _no_, I worked to get money."

"That's not what I mean."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"About Bree, about those clones! You didn't have to… _kill_ them."

"Then what do you think I could've done? Knocked them out so that they could get arrested like the other Death Eaters – those that survived that is – and have them break everyone out of Azkaban? Hermione, you haven't begun to grasp the situation at all. There is no prison that can hold people with my brand of magic, and the only way to keep them out of trouble permanently is to kill them. Do you understand me?"

"You didn't have to kill them, though."

This time, Katrina groaned aloud and in perfect drama-queen posture begged the skies for a lightning bolt, **_please_**. "Hello? Have you been listening? I told you that no wizard or witch that ever lived could mark me, and I'm just one in many clones. Now tell me how many of them could be killed by a wizard or witch?"

Hermione was silent.

Katrina sighed. "I don't want to kill, and I'm sure none of my friends want to either, bar a few that have been otherwise raised to be bloodthirsty, but I digress, that's not the point." She paused, looking through a window as a bird flew inside and landed on Katrina's shoulder.

To Hermione, Katrina's eyes suddenly turned silver – perhaps it was the sun? – and she listened as Katrina's lips moved. "You must be very lucky," she murmured to the bright blue bird. "Nobody depends on you but yourself, and you can fly away from your predators." Like it was agreeing, the bird chirped and bobbed up and down. "If a wolf tries to eat you, there's no way it can leap as far as you fly, right? Even though I _can_ fly, I can't fly away like you can… I can't leave everything behind and escape. In the end, that wolf is going to kill me…"

Shaking her head as if to stop herself thinking such thoughts, her long ponytail swung around and thwacked lightly on the bird's back, sending it flying away, as free as, well, a bird. Katrina turned back to Hermione, and for a moment, just for a short second, Hermione gazed into one silver-white orb and one blood-red eye, and she watched, shocked as bright blue spilled through them, like ink diffusing into water.

But then she blinked, and Katrina's eyes were bright blue, as they always were, and always had been, said her mind. Always have been blue.

"As I was saying, there's no other way, if I am to make sure that as few casualties occur because of me. To gain something… you must be prepared to lose something else in exchange."

Hermione blinked blankly for a few seconds, until Katrina's words sank in. "What are you talking about, because of you? I mean, I know that these people only seem to be interested in killing you, but why?"

Katrina smiled slightly. "Ah, at last, you're not glaring at me as if I'd killed your entire extended family. But anyway, you must've realised that I know all of these people, and we used to be 'friends' of a sort. Except… _that_ day happened, and well, all those people think I'm encroaching on their territory and that I want to take it away from them, but I don't. All of my friends here that are helping me, they are all outcasts of a kind, but not nearly as much as I am. You wouldn't want to be labelled cursed, would you, and then thrown out of one half of your family just because the other half was killed by some nutcase member of said killed family, would you?"

"Heh?" Hermione blinked. She seemed to be doing that a lot these days.

"Just kidding." Katrina laughed. "These people just want to kill me to 'become the best'. Technically, there are a few out there that just want to beat me, not kill me, but a lot of these people are exceptionally blood-thirsty, and for them to actually realise that they can't enter here without attacking with Voldemort and to actually join his ranks… They're pretty desperate to become the best."

"Uh… so why'd you come here, to Hogwarts? Surely at your previous school, they wouldn't have been able to penetrate the magic there."

"Oh, they were able to, even blew apart most of the castle. The magical defenses there aren't as strong as they are here, but I wasn't exactly expecting them to join Voldemort's ranks. Now," Katrina rolled her shoulders then smiled at Hermione. "Do you still hate me?"

Hermione blinked, then frowned slightly.

"I'll take that as a 'yes'. What else have I done?"

"You rejected me."

Katrina looked at Hermione as if she was crazy. "You have to be kidding me, Hermione. Either you're so full of yourself that you can't believe that someone rejected you or you're naïve. Now, which one is it? Don't answer that, it was just a rhetorical question. Hermione, you _know_ that I'm not to be tied down, not even to a 'home'. You _know_ that the kind of people I really make friends with are people just like me, and you should've guessed by now that 'Bree' was just a clone of a certain someone who you should also have guessed I am involved with. Now tell me that you're still hung up about me."

Hermione gaped, then she narrowed her eyes. "If you're involved with someone, then why isn't she here?"

Katrina laughed, the same tinkling sound as always. To Hermione, it seemed to always calm her anger and frustrations, helping her to keep her cool and think properly. "No-one walking this earth can find her, but I promised her I would, and I know where she is, and I know how to get to her. Just very few people would actually take the decision I have made, but very few people are _me_, you know."

"What are you talking about? You're going to kill yourself?!"

"Oh no, I won't kill myself, that'd just be throwing my life away. No, I'm going to avenge her and my family first, then I'm going live. I'm going to let her go, fall in love again, find a new 'family' of sorts, and in doing so… I can live the life she wanted us to have, just with someone else who's not going to be 'just like her', but 'just like themselves'." Katrina's eyes were slightly unfocussed, but then she looked back at Hermione.

"But not before I take care of all the excess baggage I have right now, and that includes my family and that b$& cousin of mine."

"And how do you think that'll help you find her?! Are you even listening to what you're talking about?" Hermione burst out.

Katrina smiled. "Of course I know what I'm talking about. Have you ever heard the reason why the Buddha couldn't hate anyone? He said 'to hate someone is to hate something inside of them, and they are part of me so that would be like hating myself'. If I live freely, I'll be able to find her… inside of me."

"Live freely? You just said earlier, that you can't 'leave everything behind and escape', that 'in the end, that wolf is going to kill you'. How can you live free if you think that?!"

Katrina's face turned from dreamy into a cold mask, anger apparent in every nuance of her body language. "Do you know what you are doing, Granger? You are so good at destroying hopes and dreams that you don't realise what your words do. You don't realise that you destroy people's sole reason to live, you don't even know that something is wrong. You just think that you've just made everything alright by correcting everyone and everything, but you _don't know what it's like to be me_." With that, Katrina stalked away, leaving Hermione behind, her eyes wide open in shock.


	6. Chapter Six

Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices – Chapter Six –

by Katherine Chan

A/N: By now, you should see that Katrina either has some serious emotional baggage _or_ has a (or some) serious mental issues. Or both. She ain't so perfect, is she? And please note that I have mentioned – or at least I _think_ I mentioned – that Katrina isn't such a clear-cut 'good-guy', but really is just herself, which is, to Harry Potter at least, a 'good-guy' most of the time but a 'bad-guy' when it comes to some issues. And that 'bad-guy' status will really rear its ugly head by the time the seventh year rolls around.

Let the story begin!

The next day, Katrina had disappeared yet again, except this time, even her bodyguards didn't know where she had gone. After a few days, they had all disappeared to go searching for her. The weeks rolled by, impromptu testing on their magic skills had been finished quite a while ago, and then the year was over, they were free to go, but no-one had seen neither hide nor hair of Katrina.

Harry seriously didn't want to return to Privet Drive, but then he considered the charm that Dumbledore had placed on the house. If he was there and while he still called home the place where his mother's blood dwelled – that is, Aunt Petunia and perhaps Dudley – no-one could harm him. And so off he went to Privet Drive, knowing that Ron and most likely Hermione as well would be shipped off to Number 12, Grimmauld Place as soon as possible. Dumbledore had informed Harry that they would buy his school books for him, and then he would be taken straight from the Dursleys to Hogwarts.

The summer was spent feeling a stab of pain shoot through him every time he read the front page of the newspaper, but all of the other days put together could not compare with the front page of the _Daily Prophet_ that appeared two weeks after the summer holidays had begun.

_Katrina Elena Dolohov, The Masked of Girl of Diagon Alley & 'The Shadow' One and the Same Person_

**Wanted** for the Killing of Nine of Japan's Most Wanted Wizards and Witches and also for the Murder of the Muggle American President, 'The Shadow' has been revealed to be Diagon Alley's 'Masked Girl'.

Late yesterday, the Katrina Elena Dolohov was sighted, masked, fighting a yet another set of Death Eaters. At one point, her mask was blown off (_see Above_) by a spell and her identity was confirmed by several brave bystanders.

One of the Death Eaters revealed himself to have to same strange brand of magic as Katrina, and in their banter, he named the masked girl as 'The Shadow', and this was confirmed when she melted into the shadows and commanded the shadows to strangle the man.

Harry read the newspaper report over and over again, searching the photograph for some telltale sign to prove that it _wasn't_ Katrina, but there was nothing he could find that could discount the front page title. Further into the report, it was revealed that The Shadow had killed over five thousand American soldiers, and after that, she had gone on a killing rampage across Europe and Asia, before disappearing as quickly as she had appeared. The most 'important' killings she had done were in Japan, where she had killed nine of the wizarding world's most wanted wizards and witches, all of whom had killed and tortured many people.

The only thing that separated those nine and Katrina was the fact that all those that she had killed had been killed quickly and cleanly, or at least as quickly and cleanly as she could manage in the situation, though that was a small and easily overlooked detail. Harry still couldn't reconcile the image of the heroine that had fought so hard for them, that had saved him and many others countless times, with this cold, heartless and ruthless killer. He tried to tell himself it was just another smear campaign, just like the Daily Prophet had done to him only a year ago. He tried to convince himself that Katrina was innocent. But the fact remained that if it really _was_ a smear campaign, then what had Katrina done to make the Ministry do this?

Nothing seemed to fit together, everything was just a big mess. Harry stared forlornly out the window as life in Privet Drive went on, as the beginnings of fear stirred in his heart, wondering… wondering who she had been fighting for in the first place.

The days passed, with more and more news of strange deaths scattered all over the world, deaths where the victims looked unhurt on the outside, but inside, they found that the brain had been burnt up, somehow… or others that had been suffocated but there were no marks around the neck of the victim. In only two weeks since her disappearance, over five hundred witches, wizards and Muggles had been slaughtered, with the hallmarks of The Shadow all over them.

_"__In the end, that wolf is going to kill me…"_

Hermione twitched. The moment Katrina had drawn of her power to her to kill as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time possible, Hermione's memories of that day had been released. She remembered the one white and one red eye, she remembered _everything_. Hermione gazed at the newspaper clippings in front of her, all displaying moving photo's of Aurors examining the victims of The Shadow. One of the Aurors was examining a drawing on the building next to the bodies, daubed in the blood of one of the victims no doubt, as one of the victims had a slit cut into their wrist. The drawing displayed a several wolves, with more unfinished ones at the edges. The photo was one of the earlier ones, and in later ones, the picture daubed near the bodies had more and more wolves, and there were more and more frequent deaths. Harry had told Hermione about the wolves on Katrina's arms; perhaps it was a kind of curse that took her mind over?

The constant riddles, saying one thing and then saying something else that made the first thing impossible… Perhaps Katrina really was mentally instable, and the power she held was something that made her all the more dangerous because of it. Or was it the other way round? Was it her own power that had warped her mind? Katrina's past was entirely shrouded in mystery, and the only people who could answer were her 'friends' that had protected Hogwarts. Hermione wondered if they would still be there, or if they were searching for Katrina.

A bell rang, and Hermione hurried to answer the door. She peered through the little peep-hole, and her eyes widened when she realised an extremely ragged looking Christina was standing outside her door. Hermione drew her wand out, opened the door and pointed it straight at Christina's chest.

"What do you want?"

Christina quirked an eyebrow at the wand, but then she literally collapsed against the screen door in exhaustion. "Just… just le' me in, there's something I have to tell you."

"Why should I trust you?" Hermione was still wary, still scared.

"Little one, if I had wanted your life, I would have already killed you, even in my current state. Just let me in."

"Why don't you go to Dumbledore? I can't help you, you know."

Christina sighed. "I don't think it's Dumbledore that Katrina had a crush on, you know. Let me in, or I'll let myself in."

Hermione's eyes widened again, and despite what her mind was telling her, she opened the door and was ready when Christina slumped in the doorway. She helped Christina up the stairs to the bathroom – thankfully Hermione's parents were in the living room, with the door closed.

"What is it you think I can do that you can't?" Hermione handed one of her larger shirts and pants to Christina, whose own clothes were in tatters and splattered with blood, her own and others' mixing.

"We raised the alarm when we realised she was using her Shadow and Light powers, and every single one of us in the entire world has lent their power to their area's most powerful fighter, and they to their next most powerful, and there are about five hundred of us who have been sent to bring her down. Even the mercenaries from outer space have begun to rush back to Earth. But none of us, even though we work together, has anywhere near enough power to even mark her. She hasn't even got a scratch, let alone a fatal wound."

Hermione flinched. "You mean… you mean you're all trying to _kill_ her?! And you haven't answered my question yet, either."

"We are… there is… no other way that we can think of… except for why I am here. Before… before her blood took her over, she mentioned to me that there was someone… Someone remarkably intelligent compared to other humans she had ever encountered. You are the only way, Hermione, that she will stop, even for a moment. A moment is all we need. Right now, she is like a whirlwind, and our blood is flowing to stain the world."

"Why? Why is she killing so many people? None of them even have anything in common!"

"That's correct, none of her victims have anything to do with one another. Her blood has called to her for a long time, and it has finally caught up with her. I remember the day she was talking to you, when she started talking to that bird. The wolf she was talking about was herself, and her blood… She has not killed like she is now for a long time, and her heart yearns to be satiated. But now, you have to come with me, Hermione."

At that, Christina shot up from her sitting position, grabbed Hermione and teleported right into battle before she'd even begun to absorb what was going on. "What do you think you're doing?! This is kidnap! You're going to get me killed!" The exhausted fighters beside her gazed at this human, and realized her for what she was, what she meant to the demon they were fighting.

"Everyone has a destiny, and your destiny was decided the moment she fell in love with you!" The fighters arranged themselves into circles, and then they began to glow, then the balls of light flew into the middle of the many circles, forming a new being, a more powerful being. To give their energy to someone else, they had to fuse, something that was permanent. They were willing to give up their lives to save others, because that was something ingrained into _their_ blood.

As these fused fighters continued to fuse, Christina grasped Hermione's hands, and then she began to glow. Hermione gaped as she began to glow as well. "No… what are you thinking?!" She tried to wrest her hands from Christina's unforgiving grasp, but Hermione, being a witch but still human, could not free herself. Christina brought her face close to Hermione's, so that her mouth was beside Hermione's ear. "I'm doing this because by yourself, you won't be able to hold her still long enough. Even if it means we both lose ourselves in the attempt, because in the end, either way, whether we live or not, we are not going to be the people we were." She whispered. Hermione paused, and in that moment, Christina's mind melded with hers, memories intertwining, opinions easing together side by side… a perfect fusion. Just before they were both entirely fused, 'Christina' muttered to 'Hermione': "And I wouldn't be doing this unless I knew we weren't going to go insane from wildly differing perspectives. We share the same fate, and although you were born far away with a different path than me, our destiny was set the moment Katrina was cursed all those years ago."

The many fusing fighters braced themselves against the ground as they let their scrambled brains straighten themselves out. "Needs must," whispered Christina and Hermione, both knowing that the fused fighters would be struggling for their sanity. "Needs must."

Half an hour later, the fifty or so fighters left, plus Christina and Hermione, were streaking off, searching for Katrina, who had disappeared whilst they were all fusing. Christina/Hermione experienced two feelings as she flew over the land: one, the exhilaration of first flight, and two, the apprehension of certain death by the hands of someone she loved. As they flew high over a lake, Christina/Hermione marvelled at the exceptional eyesight, catching a glimpse of her reflection. She contemplated her new face in her mind, the fine, delicate slanted cheekbones, that seemed to belong to someone who would never been seen within a half-kilometre radius of a battle, the slightly curly light brown hair, the storm grey eyes…

"My name is… I am Ysira!" The legend of the Wolf-Curse, the one named Ysira who was the only one who could prevent the Twisted One from truly waking; all of this was remembered in an instant by all who heard, including Katrina.

Who was holding hands with Voldemort, both of them glowing slightly but growing increasingly brighter. Ysira spied the Order of the Phoenix approaching from one side, and further behind them, a small gang of Hogwarts students, including Harry Potter. There had to be a reason why Katrina would be fusing with someone far weaker than her, and a male at that. Entering her mind would be out of the question, as she might end up being dragged into the fusion herself. Instead, Ysira tapped into Harry's mind, the person who held the strongest link to Voldemort, even if it was a hate-hate bond.

The bond was severed in an instant, and Ysira appeared with a crack next to Harry, grabbed his arm and disappeared again, to appear only mere metres away from the fusing Voldemort and Katrina. "Take that bastard out! You're the only one who can kill him, and I'm the only one who can stop her! We can't let them fuse!" Even as Ysira finished the sentence, she was already by Katrina's side, and risking her hands to try and wrest Katrina away. At that moment, the Order of the Phoenix attacked the Death Eaters, as did the fighters technically under the leadership of Christina.

Harry gulped, levelled his wand straight at Voldemort, and uttered the first spell that came into his head. "_Genjutsa!_" he cried. Voldemort saw the ruination of his plans, his and Katrina's fused body lying in tatters on the ground, trampled on by rejoicing members of the Order of the Phoenix. He saw everything coming apart, the cause stemming from his agreement, the agreement he was currently fulfilling…

Harry screamed, as Voldemort exploded from the confines of the mental prison, shards of horror embedding themselves in Harry's own mind, he was going to die, get killed by Voldemort- As suddenly as his own spell attacked himself, he was released, relief coursing through his veins, as Professor Nørskï helped him up even as she hexed held up a shield against an errant spell. Squinting through the translucent shield, Harry gasped when he realised that Voldemort was tearing himself from Katrina's grasp, and he could also see that the woman that looked so much like Christina and Hermione were succeeding in pulling Katrina away.

But if they weren't quick enough, the fusion would still finish, since Katrina really wasn't letting go of Voldemort. Dodging around the shield, Harry drew out a long bladed knife – something he'd picked up from all the fights he'd witnessed – and hurried forward, raising the knife, swinging it down even as Voldemort's and Katrina's bodies were flowing to where their hands joined…

"Harry! You okay, mate?" Screams rent the air, the thud of bodies on the ground… Harry opened his eyes, twitching slightly at the sting of pain in his hands. He looked at his hands to evaluate the damage and stared in horror. His hand was spattered with steadily cooling metal from the knife he had wielded. A sudden flare of light and a heart-shaking boom later, and Harry was hurrying to his feet, trying to ignore the pain shooting through his body. He saw Voldemort lying in agony on the ground, both of his hands severed at the wrist, the stumps bleeding profusely.

As he hurried forward, wand steady, spell forming on his lips, he felt a sharp sting in his left leg, ice-cold flooding through his limb. Nagini reared her head, fangs bared, readying for another strike.

"_Stupefy!_" Harry crumpled to the ground, and even as his vision blackened, Harry raised his wand, aiming it at the cackling face of Voldemort, and uttered "_Karasu!_" Another knife hidden in Harry's boots flew out like a silver arrow, and guided by his wand, struck Voldemort's forehead.

Katrina screamed in frustration as the fusion sequence was abruptly stopped, sending out a pulse of power that flung the now useless Voldemort and that meddler Potter soaring away into the gathering darkness. She whirled around to face the still present Ysira, and just as she was about to plunge her fist through the pesky human – she realised who it was.

Just as her lightning fast mind also realised _what_ the person before her was, she was already being hurtled backwards by the combined blasts of the waiting fighters – who were _technically_ under the leadership of Christina. Ysira flew behind Katrina, even as the latter was still flying backwards, and hooked her arms under Katrina's arms, legs locking around Katrina's legs. Her body was pressed right up against Katrina's back, and where it in a situation lest dire, all three people involved would have been thoroughly aroused. As it were, Ysira gathered her power into a solitary focal point in her, then flung it outwards.

Her tears evaporated as her power rampaged outwards, ripping apart her body cells as well as Katrina's, but the blast was thankfully contained by the combined shields of the now leaderless fighters.

Ron stumbled towards the next body, to identify if the person was a Death Eater or an ally, and whether they were dead or not. The black hair made the already pale face seem even more pallid, the blood spatters around the man's mouth made it even more macabre. Ron slumped to his knees, hand reaching for the metal spattered limb, and was stunned to find a dogged pulse pumping its way through Harry's body. Harry coughed, more blood spurting out of his already blood drained body. "He's here! Hurry! He's gonna die!" Ron watched helplessly as the mediwizards did all they could to save the almost-corpse. A man appeared – Anthony – and he forcibly picked up the mediwizards in his way, clearing a path for him. Kneeling next to Harry, he cast his healing magic, burning the poison away, fighting the death magic that had flooded through his body.

A few minutes later, Anthony sat down heavily, thoroughly exhausted. Ron realised that the man wasn't really Anthony, but still quite similar. "He'll wake up in a few minutes… which is more than can be said of Katrina or Ysira…" The man sighed, and everyone stared as tears began leaking out of his eyes, steadily increasing until there was a torrent.

All the wizards and witches watched uncomfortably as the man wept on the loss of two lives that had been dear to him, and also one other that should never have been involved. That wouldn't have been involved if he hadn't nudged Katrina into transferring schools.

In fact, none of this would have happened if on that night that everything had truly begun, he had not followed Katrina's mother to her room.

**THE END**

Aww… that's so sad. I'm just amazed that I kept this _way_ out of the explicit zone, not even a single kiss. The following 'good guys' are specifically mentioned as dead in the course of the story.

Name

Cause of Death

Ginny Weasley

Unspecified

Bree

Unspecified

Hermione Granger (Ysira)

Kamikaze

Christina (Ysira)

Kamikaze

The following 'bad guys' are specifically mentioned as dead in the course of the story.

Name

Cause of Death

Man from Diagon Alley

_Expecto Patronus_

Man outside Hogwarts

Power blast

(Female) Death Eater

Voldemort's Death Seal

Clone

Knife stab

Bree's Clone

Internal injuries

Voldemort

Knife stab


	7. Epilogue

Author's Note:

I'm sorry this took so long – I'm sure people that had waited for anything related to this have given up long ago. As it is, I'm writing something (epic length, hopefully) on FictionPress (you all know how to get there, right?), and that's taken up a large amount of my free writing time, which is already limited, what with exams…

I have final year exams this year, so please bear in mind that updates will be few and far between, as I am currently taking a more formal (and hopefully professional) approach to my writing – which means repeated reviewing and actually writing out a plot.

This chapter came out of nowhere, and I'm sure it's a heck of a lot better than the previous examples of my writing, either here on FFiction or FPress.

WARNING: There are references to homosexuality in this chapter. If you are that against to homosexuality that you can't stand a kiss that isn't even described, then you… uh… have strong, rigid morals. Glad to see someone around here does.

Disclaimer:

Prove that the author is not J. K. Rowling.

The author is not Caucasian.

The author's surname starts with the letter C and their given name with the letter K – hence it is true that the author is not J. K. Rowling.

QED

Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices: Epilogue

The floor is cold, and hard, unforgiving upon the cheeks of her face and the raw skin on her palms. She opens her eyes, greeted by the dull monotonous grey stone floor, and she swings her eyes up, peering through her bushy hair. Small lights bright enough for her to be unable to distinguish the shape of the bulbs dot the ceiling at frequent, regular intervals. The ceiling and the walls are as undistinguished as the floor.

She struggles up onto her knees, black school robes crumpled up beyond the power of the ironing charm. Her fingers flicker over the wand holster strapped to her right arm, seeking reassurance in the presence of the smooth polished wood. She looks to her left, to her right, down and up the long hallway that disappears off into the distance, doors of varying material breaking the monotony every few paces, on either side of the hallway. From her position, it seems like the hallway is perfectly straight and to the best of her knowledge – which, despite her prodigious intelligence, is currently well and truly stumped – it is all infinite.

Just to make sure, she scrabbles around in her pocket, trying to find something disposable that she can use to mark her starting point. Not her watch (she would need that), not her quill (that cost five galleons, it did!), not her shrunken copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ (best book known to wizarding and witching kind, she always argued), _definitely_ not her wand or the holster it resided in… Ah, there it was – a Chocolate Frog, still in its packet.

She and the others had taken to carrying large amounts of chocolate somewhere on their person – who knew when they'd encounter a Dementor, or had been kidnapped and locked up without food, or just plain needed that extra kick to last the night up reading? She pulled it out, and attached it to the floor with a Sticking Charm.

The Chocolate Frog looked up at her, trying to leap about like they normally did, but the Charm held. It looked to its left, to its right, down and up the long hallway, then looked back up at her. The Frog blinked once, twice, slowly, then burst into flames.

She stared – completely and utterly shocked and nonplussed. What in Merlin's name was going on? Was it the Sticking Charm? Another Chocolate Frog, sans Sticking Charm – this one leapt from the floor and flipped up into her hair, and she could feel it looking left, looking right, down and up the hallway, and then it burst into flames.

A quick _fluvium_ and a jet of water shot out of her wand, putting her flaming, bushy brown hair out. She sighed, something was definitely wrong here. She pulled out a packet of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, pulled one out, inspected it carefully – oh, wait, this was a pizza flavoured one – popped it into her mouth, picked another one (either earwax or toffee, she wasn't sure and didn't want to find out), and dropped it to the ground.

She stared at it, one, two, three seconds, and after half a minute, secure in the knowledge that it was going to _stay_ there, she breathed out in relief.

With a _plop!_, the dull monotonous grey stone floor rippled like the bean was a raindrop and the floor a pool of water, and the golden yellow Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean _slowly_ disappeared into the floor.

Hermione – mouth open wide in indignant shock – stood there for another half a minute, then dropped another bean. This time, as if the floor had merely been wanting to mock her just that first time, the floor starting rippling immediately and the bean disappeared again.

Sighing, she muttered _flagrate_1, and drew a flaming red and gold cross into the stone. The flames danced merrily, and after a few minutes (she _knew_ there was a reason why she needed her watch), Hermione turned her back on the flame and walked down the hall, the crackling of the flaming cross echoing in her ears.

After a couple of doors, she realised she couldn't hear the crackling anymore, and she hurried back where she'd come. No flaming cross could be seen anywhere – she'd even counted the number of doors that she'd passed on her way from the cross, and retraced her steps, but there was definitely no flame anymore. Not even some soot, or a bit of melted rock.

"_Damn_," Hermione cursed – non-magically, of course. It seemed that the hallway she was in didn't want her to know how far she'd been. Perhaps it didn't matter, but Hermione liked order, and order _demanded_ that she be able to find her way back.

This was getting her nowhere, so she decided that maybe she'd open a door – if she could. She strode to the closest door (a hickory door, that hummed vaguely when she placed her right palm on the door and grasped the brass handle with her left hand), and inched it open slowly. Hermione wasn't so unhinged by the hallway's attempts to disorient her that she'd forgotten that she didn't know where she was and that it was most likely that danger lurked on the other side.

The hickory door swung open, and she was greeted by a view of Katrina and another woman kissing frantically and bearing down quickly on the bed. With a slam, Hermione hurled the door closed. She leaned against the smooth wood, eyes focussed on the whorls in an effort to forget about what she'd just seen. Coupled with her fast paced breathing was an unshakable certainty in her mind that she was most definitely _not going to open that door again_. Nor was she going to enter wherever that place had been, but she was glad that at least _they_ hadn't seen her.

Hermione moved to the next door, pausing nervously, then opened the sweet-smelling sandalwood door. There, sitting at a metal table was Katrina again, but a little older than Hermione remembered (that is, compared to the _good_ memories of her) and the Katrina she'd seen through the other door. This Katrina was smiling contentedly at the handsome man across from her – he was familiar, Hermione had seen him around at Hogwarts sometime prior to Katrina's disappearance – and the two small children that were also sitting at the table, all digging in happily.

Hermione spent a few minutes standing there, watching Katrina who was smiling freely and loosely, fully content in her life. The extent of the technology around the room indicated that it was a fair amount of time after Hermione had last seen, well, _her_ Katrina, but she couldn't be sure, because after a few metres, her view of what was in the room blurred as if a barrier of prescriptive lens glass surrounded the area.

This wasn't her place, and Hermione knew it, as she shut the door. Palm resting against the sandalwood, letting the scent wash over her, and seep into the hollow in her chest that had gaped open in the last minute or two of seeing Katrina so happy.

The next door was made of some dark rough wet branches, moss trailing here and there. A chill stung her hand when she rested her hand on the handle which was made of the same unknown wood. She pushed the door open, and there were people standing there in blacks, the sky was overcast and drizzling down, and the rough patches of grass on the ground were more yellow than green. The people were standing around a stone of some sort, smooth and rounded, but then they broke away and Hermione could read the lettering carved into it, could see the engraving of the face of the person buried there.

_Katrina Elena Dolohov_

_16 March 1986 – 02 April 2001_

_Beloved Sister, Daughter and Comrade_

_May the Swords of Hell Ne'er Come Again_

Hermione stared at the stone pill, and her heart broke again. She shut the branch-made door and strode immediately to the next door, a marble one inlaid with gold.

Katrina had wings – glowing white wings that were made more of power than feathers – coming out of her back, but they weren't what was holding her up in the air. She floated there in the air, and within the five or so metre radius that Hermione could see clearly in, other winged people flew, and she knew this was the realm of the Gods. Not Heaven, where worthy souls of mortals went, but Tenkai, where the gods and goddesses were born and raised and lived when they weren't meddling in the lives of mortals.

This Katrina exuded an aura of regret and sorrow, and Hermione, somehow (perhaps it was the magic of the hallway and the doors) understood it was because her closest friends had perished in a war, and she was the only one left to carry their stories into the future.

Hermione closed the door, and distracted herself by wondering why no-one had been able to see her looking on into their worlds. Perhaps the people waiting on the other side of the door meant for her would be able to see her, and she'd be able to see more than a few metres into the 'room'.

She opened the next door, a heavy stone door the likes of which she'd only seen in Gringotts. On the other side, in the dirt and beneath the thick tree branches, lay a skeleton, a metallic dart lying within the bones. _Poison_, Hermione thought to herself, and she knew this Katrina had died alone, her passing unmarked.

Hermione shut the door, and swung open the next (a cold, hard steel door, with criss-crossing security-type bars). Katrina stood there, snarling and growling, beads of saliva inching their way past the _SHARP POINTY TEETH_ and the claws were heading her way and Hermione slammed the door shut, crying '_Colloportus!_'. The door swept open a few centimetres (Hermione screamed this time, sure the mad Katrina with the swirling wolf tattoos was going to get her), before the spell acted and it squelched shut again. Loud bangs and thuds could be heard, and the door shuddered time and again.

Hermione backed away from the door, and wondered just what in Merlin's name she was going to do. How had this Katrina seen her? Was this the door she was expected to go through? She'd seen, even as she screamed hysterically like that time with Fluffy, that the floor had been littered with chunky hunks of flesh and bones and splattered with blood, viscera and various organs everywhere.

She opened the next door, and the next, and the next after that, working her way down the hallway. Sometimes she saw Katrina with another woman, sometimes with a man, sometimes with children, sometimes standing side-by-side with her dearest friends, sometimes dead and buried or just plain dead… There was the occasional 'mad wolf', but Hermione learned to avoid those steel security doors.

One door – made of what seemed to be misty marshmallows – opened to a fairy-tale like world, where Katrina and Co. battled with fierce monsters and saved villages and altogether did all the fantastical things Hermione had only seen in Muggle fairytale books and within the pages of Lockhart's biographies.

In none of them – save the 'mad wolf' ones, and she didn't want to think about that – did any of the inhabitants of those realities see her looking on. Perhaps she was undetectable by any of the normal and supernormal senses that Katrina or whoever else inhabited those worlds possessed, save the animalistic nightmare wolves.

Hermione glanced at her watch – she'd been travailing the halls of what she'd come to realise as the many doorways that led to different alternative realities that contained Katrina for five hours now. She'd eaten all of the candy on her person, apart from the truly detestable flavours of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, and was now ready to try conjuring some food the way she'd heard Harry describe Professor Dumbledore did. If anything, hunger would provide the concentration she'd need to do something so complex.

She glanced left, glanced right, down and up the hallway, and saw that the hallway behind her, where she'd tried all of the doors apart from the metal security doors, had darkened, the glowing lights in the ceiling disappearing completely. When she tried to go back, an unseen barrier stopped her where the light ended, and she didn't bother trying to rupture it with a _reducto_ – for all she knew, it might rip the space-time continuum or something, hurling her into a Star Trek nightmare where people ate only purple things and talked in limericks without using the letter '_e_'.

She continued opening doors, sometimes seeing a younger version of Katrina, sometimes an old geriatric one, sometimes one missing an arm or a leg or both, sometimes a _male_ version of Katrina named Kastor…

Until she realised that the hallway that seemed to go on and on had ended suddenly, and she was at a dead end, the path behind her black and off-limits, with only one door left to her.

It was a black door that seemed so black it grabbed at the light emitted by the sole glowing mass in the dull monotonous grey stone ceiling above.

Hermione paused, hesitant – what if this last dimension wasn't hers? What would happen? She raised her left hand, her right ready to flick out her wand from its holster in record time. The shadow door had a bright silver looking handle, that was shaped like a dragon – not like the ones that had been in the Triwizard Tournament, not like the ones she'd seen in Muggle picture books, not like the ones depicted in Chinese artworks or Japanese _shisaa_ (stone guardian statues that scared off evil spirits), but a regal smooth scaled glittering creature that she'd seen somewhere before.

She opened the door, heart in her throat, hoping that what was on the other side would be somewhere safe, somewhere happy, somewhere Katrina was alive.

Katrina was bent down under a worktable, rummaging for something. She came back up in a smooth languid motion, muscles moving smoothly and bones shifting without any creaking or groaning, like a well oiled machine. The small hammer she held in her hand was smooth metal, dinted here and there from frequent use, the handle bound by thin rope that was just that side of rough, enough for someone to grip comfortably.

Her clothes – a long sleeved pale blue shirt underneath a darker blue tee, coupled with long baggy black tracksuit pants, the tips of comfortable looking sneakers peeking out from underneath – hung comfortably from her steady frame, and the hammer twirled up and over and around Katrina's hand, lithe fingers moving smooth and agile.

Hermione munched on the blueberry muffin she'd finally been able to conjure, and watched as Katrina continued working on refitting a hilt to the long blade on the workbench, her back to the doorway Hermione was standing in.

_Tap, tap, tap_, the hammer went, and the hilt was pegged to the blade tightly. Katrina nodded minutely, put the hammer away and picked the sword up in one hand.

A pause, and then Katrina turned and faced Hermione's direction, the sword held out hilt first to Hermione.

Katrina smiled. "You can come in, you know."

Hermione's eyes widened, couldn't believe, really, that this dimension was where she belonged. Hesitantly, she stepped in, fingers discreetly brushing the last crumbs of blueberry muffin off on her robes. Katrina wiggled the sword a little. "Go on, it's yours."

Hermione reached out, fingers grasping at the soft cushioned handle of the long blade, grasping it firmly. She looked at the blade and the swirling guard and the soft but tough silk covered hilt. There were runes marked all over the masterpiece, and there was a small name-circle rune, in which names could be carved in runes that spelt out the owner's name phonetically.

Hermione frowned at the runes, her lessons in Ancient Runes (and the brief week pertaining to name-circles) rising to the forefront, and she muttered allowed as she puzzled out the phonetics.

"_Ir_… uh… _Ir_ _Nio_- oh wait, that combination means '_Hir_'. Uh… '_Hir_', _Mara Sarez_ – that's '_Myon_', so… '_Hir Myon_', and… _Nurekazat Ehwaz_: _'Ne'_ for short and _Ehwaz_ means 'change', so in name-circles, that's the end of the name. So… '_Hir Myon Ne'_." Hermione blinked. "Oh! 'Hermione'!"

Katrina smiled cheerfully. "This is wonderful!" Hermione gasped, and she flung her arms around Katrina – the sword's blade carefully out of the way, of course.

Katrina returned the hug, and she said "I'm glad you like it, Hermione."

Hermione smiled widely, and at that moment, she realised that she couldn't see the doorway she'd come in through, but she could see all of the large workroom.

"This…" she murmured, gazing around at the room and the stairs leading upwards to what would undoubtedly be the rest of the house.

Her sword – which was still in her grip – shifted, and Hermione looked down, to see that Katrina was fitting a scabbard on. She changed her grip so that she was now holding the scabbard, the hilt pointing upwards. "Thanks," she murmured, as the scabbard was as much a work of art as the sword.

Katrina smiled. "It's okay. This-" she gestured to the workroom, and then also vaguely upwards. "This, is, well, my house. Do you want a tour?"

Hermione blinked. "You- you know I'm not…?"

"Not from this dimension? Of course – but it's your dimension now, and you'll be wanting that sword if you want to gallivant around the countryside on adventures with the rest of us!"

Something made its way up into Hermione's throat, constricting her speech. "A… a… _adventures_!" Her previous experience with 'adventures' tended to lead to danger and people being attacked by dangerous entities and invariably someone incapacitated for some time or even dead. As such, she was definitely wary of embarking on any such 'adventures'.

Katrina smiled, amused. "Not the dangerous kind – at least, it won't be dangerous for you now, although it may have been before."

Hermione's eyes narrowed, and she glared suspiciously at Katrina. "What are you talking about?" She drawled her words out warily.

"Well…" Katrina flung her hands up in a vague gesture. "You've spent a _heck_ of a lot of time in that dimensional hallway, right? And looking through doors and all that, no? With that, you've absorbed a substantial amount of the, well… um… it's not 'magic' per se, or the spiritual power of the gods, or the chakra of the shinobi, or the _reiatsu_ that Shinigami emit, or… well, just think about it as the essence of the trans-dimensional portals, and also about whatever 'element' the worlds you looked at possessed… that essence and those 'elements' would have embedded themselves in your, uh… um…" Here, Katrina tried to find the correct word. "Um… well, let's call it your 'soul', so yeah, they embedded themselves into your soul – depending on how long you stayed in the hallway and how long you watched through the portals… And so you would have minor 'talents' in several quite powerful skills. The strongest being teleportation, as you spent the longest time in the hallway."

Hermione let this large amount of information sink into her brain – which was quite powerful, if she did say so herself. "So… hang on, if I absorbed some 'skills' from the worlds I looked at through portals, and all the worlds – including the one I came from – have 'powers', right?" Katrina nodded. "Do all the people in those worlds possess the 'skill' that I absorbed from that world?"

Katrina shook her head. "No, they don't. Well, they possess the capability of the skill, but only if they move to another dimension where the limiter for that skill doesn't exist. So, your strongest 'skill' would be the one you got from the dimension you're from, then the one from the trans-dimensional hallway's essence."

"Hmm…" Hermione pondered over this nugget of an explanation. "Hang on, how do you know so much about this?"

Katrina blinked. "Because you're not the first person that's come through to this dimension from the hallway – almost fifty people have passed through to here that way, and it's all documented. You're the first person that's opened a doorway next to me, though."

Hermione sighed. It wasn't as if she was the kind of person that had new and unimaginable things happen to them – Harry was the one that attracted 'adventures' and 'trouble', and she'd been merely caught in the crossfire.

"So uh… adventures?"

Katrina smiled again. "Yeah, adventures."

_They stood over the cooling remains of a Basilisk. As much as a cold-blooded animal could 'cool'. At least, Hermione _thought_ it was a cold-blooded animal._

_She'd thrown daggers of steel that she'd morphed out of her Steel Skin skill – hey, alliteration! – and blinded the Basilisk, whose killing sight hadn't been able to affect her as she'd… well… been standing to its left and it had been sleeping. And she'd been two kilometres away, using Eagle Sight. _

_Katrina looked at her, and smiled. The other members of the group had split off already, chasing after some pack of wolves. They had stayed because wolves brought bad memories to Hermione and Katrina wasn't sure if Hermione would get lost within five weeks or five minutes._

"_Good work." _

_A blush from Hermione. "Thanks."_

_Hermione wondered, not for the first time, why this dimension had chosen her – or why she'd chosen it, she wasn't sure which it was._

_Katrina spoke up suddenly. "I'm free, you know."_

_The non sequitor threw Hermione for a moment, until she saw that the bandages that were normally wrapped around Katrina's forearms had been unrolled, and the wolf tattoos were melting and the colours were whirling together, melting down in great fat gobs, landing on the ground where they hissed into smoke and dissipated._

"_What just happened?" Hermione asked._

"_The others must've killed the wolves they were chasing." Katrina offered._

_Hermione frowned. "You mean that there's a pack of wolves in each dimension and they are represented by those tattoos? And to remove those insanity tattoos… you have to kill said pack of wolves?"_

_Katrina looked pensive for a few moments. "That's about right."_

_Hermione blinked, incredulous. Even though she'd gone from thinking about this dimension's Katrina as 'the other Katrina' and the one she'd met that had gone insane from her home dimension was no longer 'her Katrina', she was still thoroughly incensed that so many lives could have been saved by-_

_She was broken out of her thoughts by Katrina. "I'm free." She repeated, arms finally bare, for the first time ever, unstained by the world and vengeful fathers that wished that the little bastardette didn't look so much like the man her mother had had an affair with._

_Fin._

A/N: And that is the finish. The endless amount of doors was a small token to the little tour to the Department of Mysteries in Book 5 and those revolving endless amount of doors. There's also a little backstory to Katrina Elena Dolohov.

There may be a cross-over between Naruto and HP in the works, but don't take my word for it. Heh.

1 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Australian Hard Cover 1st Edition), pg. 681


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